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Is Life Woeth Living? 



BT / 

WILLIAM HURKELL MALLOCK 

AXJTHOE OJT ' THE NEW EEPTTBLIC' ETC. 



' Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquietetli himself in vain.' 

■ ' How dieth the wise man ? As the fool That which t>efalleth the sons 

of men hefalleth the heasts, even one thing befalleth them: a^ the- one dieth so 
dieth the other, yea they have all one breath ; so that man hath no preeminence 
above a beast ; for all is vanity. 

' TaKaiiTiopoi iyu ai'SpwTros, Tt's jxe pu'Serai ex Tov (riojiiaTOS Tov 0ava.TOV tovtou ,•' 



NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

182 Fifth Avenue 

1879 



^ 






\^ 



1^ 



i4 



I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK 



JOHN RUSKIN 



TO JOHN RUSKIN. 

My deae Mr. Euskik, — You have given me very great 
pleasure by allowing me to inscribe this book to you, and for 
two reasons ; for I have two kinds of acknowledgment that 
I wish to make to you — first, that of an intellectual debtor to 
a public teacher ; secondly, that of a private friend to the 
kindest of private friends. The tribute I have to offer you 
is, it is true, a small one ; and it is possibly more blessed for 
me to give than it is for you to receive it. In so far, at least, 
as I represent any influence of yours, you may very possibly 
not think me a satisfactory representative. But there is one 
fact — and I will lay all the stress I can on it — which makes 
me less diffident than I might be, in offering this book either 
to you or to the world generally. 

The import of the book is independent of the book itself, 
and of the author of it ; nor do the arguments it contains 
stand or fall with my success in stating them ; and these 
last at least I may associate with your name. They are not 
mine. I have not discovered or invented them. They are 
so obvious that any one who chooses may see them ; and I 
have been only moved to meddle with them, because, from 
being so obvious, it seems that no one will so much as deign 
to look at them, or at any rate to put them together with 
any care or completeness. They might be before every- 
body's eyes ; but instead they are under everybody's feet. 
My occupation has been merely to kneel in the mud, and to 
pick up the truths that are being trampled into it, by a head- 
strong and uneducated generation. 

With what success I have done this, it is not for me to 

vii 



viii TO JOHN buskin: 

judge. But thougli I cannot be confident of the value of 
what I have done, I am confident enough of the value of 
what I have tried to do. From a literary point of view 
many faults may be found with me. There may be faults 
yet deeper, to which possibly I shall have to plead guilty. 
I may — I cannot tell — have unduly emphasized some points, 
and not put enough emphasis on others. I may be con- 
victed — nothing is more likely — of many verbal inconsist- 
encies. But let the arguments I have done my best to em- 
body be taken as a whole, and they have a vitality that does 
not depend uj)on me ; nor can they be proved false, because 
my ignorance or weakness may here or there have associated 
them with, or illustrated them by, a falsehood. I am not 
myself conscious of any such falsehoods in my book ; but if 
such are pointed out to me, I shall do my best to correct 
them. If what I have done prove not worth correction, 
others coming after me will be preferred before me, and are 
sure before long to address themselves successfully to the 
same task in which I perhaps have failed. What indeed can 
we each of us look for but a large measure of failure, espe- 
cially when we are moving not with the tide but against it 
— when the things we wrestle with are principalities and 
powers, and spiritual stupidity in high places — and when we 
are ourselves partly weakened by the very influences against 
which we are struggling ? 

But this is not all. There is in the way another diffi- 
culty. "Writing as the well-wishers of truth and goodness, 
we find, as the world now stands, that our chief foes are they 
of our own household. The insolence, the ignorance, and 
the stupidity of the age has embodied itself, and found its 
mouthpiece, in men who are personally the negations of all 
that they represent theoretically. We have men who in 
private are full of the most gracious modesty, representing 
in their philosophies the most ludicrous arrogance ; we have 



TO JOHN BUSKm. ix 

men who practise every virtue themselves, proclaiming the 
principles of every vice to others ; we have men who have 
mastered many kinds of knowledge, acting on the world only 
as embodiments of the completest and most pernicious igno- 
rance. I have had occasion to deal continually with certain 
of these by name. With the exception of one — who has died 
prematurely, whilst this book Avas in the press — those I have 
named oftenest are still living. Many of them probably are 
known to you personally, though none of them are so known 
to me ; and you will appreciate the sort of difficulty I have 
felt, better than I can express it. I can only hope that as 
the falsehood of their arguments cannot blind any of us to 
their personal merits, so no intellectual demerits in my case 
will be prejudicial to the truth of my arguments. 

To me the strange thing is that such arguments should 
have to be used all ; and perhaps a thing stranger still that 
it should fall to me to use them — to me, an outsider in 
philosophy, in literature, and in theology. But the Justifi- 
cation of my speaking is that there is any opening for me to 
speak ; and others must be blamed, not I, if 

the lyre so long divine 
Degenerates into hands like mine. 

At any rate, however all this may be, what I here inscribe 
to you, my friend and teacher, I am confident is not un- 
worthy of you. It is not what I have done ; it is what I 
have tried to do. As such I beg you to accept it, and to 
believe me still, though now so seldom near you, 

Your admiring and affectionate friend, 

W. H. MALLOCK. 

P.S. — Much of the stibstance of the following book you 
have seen already, in two Essays of mine that were pub- 



X TO JOHN EUSKIS. 

lislied in the ' Contemporary Eeview/ and in five Essays that 
■were published in the 'Nineteenth Century.' It had at one 
time been my intention, by the kindness of the respective 
Editors, to have reprinted these Essays in their original 
form. But there was so much to add, to omit, to rearrange, 
and to join together, that I have found it necessary to re- 
write nearly the whole ; and thus you will find the present 
volume virtually new. 

ToBQUAY, Mai/, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ISTEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 

PAGE 

The question may seem vague and useless ; but if we consider its 

real meaning we shall see that it is not so 1 

In the present day it has acquired a new importance 2 

Its exact meaning. It does not question the fact of human happi- 
ness 3 

But the nature of happiness, and the permanence of its basis ... 4 
For what we call the higher happiness is essentially a complex 

thing 5 

We cannot be sure that all its elements are permanent 7 

Without certain of its elements it has been declared by the wisest 

men to be valueless 8 

And it is precisely the elements in question that modern thought 

is eliminating 11 

It is contended that they have often been eliminated before ; and 

that yet the worth of life has not suffered 13 

But this contention is entirely false. They were never before 

eliminated as modern thought is eliminating them now 17 

The present age can find no genuine parallels in the past 19 

Its position is made peculiar by three facts 19 

Firstly, by the existence of Christianity 19 

Secondly, the insignificance to which science has reduced the 

earth 23 

Thirdly, the intense self -consciousness that has been developed 

in the modern world 25 

It is often said that a parallel to our present case is to be found 

in Buddhism 27 

But this is absolutely false. Buddhist positivism is the exact 

reverse of Western positivism 29 

In short, the life-problem of our day is distinctly a new and an as 

yet unanswered one 31 

xi 



Xii CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER II. 

MOEALITT AND THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 

PAGE 

The worth the positive school claim for life, is essentially a moral 

worth , . 33 

As its most celebrated exponents explicitly tell us 34 

This means that life contains some special prize, to which morality 

is the only road , 84 

And the value of life depends on the value of this prize 35 

J. S. Mill, G. Eliot, and Professor Huxley admit that this is a cor- 
rect way of stating the case 36 

But all this language as it stands at present is too vague to be of 

any use to us 38 

The prize in question is to be won in this life, if anywhere ; and 

must therefore be more or less describable 39 

What then is it ? 40 

Unless it is describable it cannot be a moral end at all 41 

As a consideration of the raison d'etre of all moral systems will 

show us 43 

The value of the prize must be verifiable by positive methods, ... 43 
And be verifiably greater, beyond all comparison, than that of 

all other prizes 44 

Has such a prize any real existence ? This is our question 44 

It has never yet been answered properly 45 

And though two sets of answers have been given it, neither of 

them are satisfactory 45 

I shall deal with these two questions in order. 47 



CHAPTER III. 

SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 

The positive theory is that the health of the social organism is 

the real foundation of morals 49 

But social health is nothing but the personal health of all the 

members of the society 51 

It is not happiness itself, but the negative conditions that make 

happiness for all 51 

Still less is social health any JiigJi kind of happiness 54 

It can only be maintained to be so, by supposing 55 



CONTENTS. xiii 

PAGE 

Either, that all kinds of happiness are equally JiigJi that do not 

interfere with others 55 

Or, that it is only a high kind of happiness that can be shared 

by all. 56 

Both of which suppositions are false 57 

The conditions of social health are a moral end only when we 

each feel a personal delight in maintaining them 58 

In this case they will supply us with a small portion of the moral 

aid needed. 59 

But this case is not a possible one 60 

There is indeed the natural impulse of sympathy that might tend 

to make it so 61 

But this is counterbalanced by the corresponding impulse of self- 
ishness 63 

And this impulse of sympathy itself is of very limited power. ... 63 

Except under very rare conditions • 63 

The conditions of general happiness are far too vague to do more 

than very slightly excite it 64 

Or give it power enough to neutralise any personal temptation. . . 66 

At all events they would excite no enthusiasm 67 

For this purpose there must be some prize before us, of recog- 
nised positive value, more or less definite 67 

And before all things, to be enjoyed by us individually 67 

Unless this prize be of great value to begin with, its value v.'ill 

not become great because great numbers obtain it 7X 

Nor until we know what it is, do we gain anything by the hope 

that men may more completely make it their own in the future. 73 
The modern positive school requires a great general enthusiasm 

for the general good 73 

They therefore jjresuppose an extreme value for the individual 

good 74 

Our first enquiry must be therefore what the higher individual 
good is 76 

CHAPTER IV. 

GOODNESS AS ITS OWN KEWAKD. 

What has been said in the last chapter is really admitted by the 

positive school themselves 77 



xiv CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

As we can learn explicitly from George Eliot 78 

In Daniel Beronda 78 

That the fundamental moral question is, 'In what way shall the 

individual make life pleasant ? 79 

And the right way, for the jDositivists, as for the Christians, is an 

inward way 80 

The moral end is a certain inward state of the heart, and the posi- 
tivists say it is a suiBcient attraction in itself, without any 

aid from religion 81 

And they support this view by numerous examples 82 

But all such examples are useless 83 

Because though we may get rid of religion in its pure form 83 

There is much that we have not got rid of, embodied still in the 

moral end 84 

To test the intrinsic value of the end, we must sublimate this re- 
ligion out of it 86 

For this purpose we will consider, first, the three general charac- 
teristics of the moral end, viz 88 

Its inwardness 88 

Its importance 89 

And its absolute character 91 

Now all these three characteristics can be explained by religion. . 93 

And cannot be explained without it 96 

The positive moral end must therefore be completely divested of 

them 100 

The next question is, will it be equally attractive then? 100 



CHAPTER V. 

LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 

The positivists represent love as a thing whose value is self-de- 
pendent ... 101 

And which gives to life a positive and incalculable worth 103 

But this is supposed to be true of one form of love only 104 

And the very opposite is supposed to hold good of all other forms. 105 
The right form depends on the conformity of each of the lovers 

to a certain inward standard 105 

As we can see exemplified in the case of Othello and Desdemona, 

etc 107 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

The kind and not tlie degree of the love is -wliat gives love its 

special value 108 

And the selection of this kind can be neither made nor justified 

on positive principles 109 

As the following quotations from Theophile Gautier will show us. 110 
Which are supposed by many to embody the true view of love. . . 110 
According to this view, purity is simply a disease both in man 

and woman, or at any rate no merit 116 

If love is to be a moral end, this view must be absolutely con- 
demned 117 

But positivism cannot condemn it, or support the opposite view. . 117 
As we shall see by recurring to Professor Huxley's argument. . . . 118 
"Which will show us that all moral language as applied to love is 

either distinctly religious or else altogether ludicrous 122 

For it is clearly only on moral grounds that we can give that 
blame to vice, which is the measure of the praise we give to 

virtue 123 

The misery of the former depends on religious anticipations 124 

And so does also the blessedness of the latter 125 

As we can see in numerous literary expressions of it. . . ■ 126 

Positivism, by destroying these anticipations, changes the whole 

character of the love in question 128 

And prevents love from supplying us ivith any moral standard. . . 131 
The loss sustained by love will indicate the general loss sustained 
by life 131 



CHAPTER VI. 

LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. 

We must now examine what will be the practical result on life 

in general of the loss just indicated 132 

To do this, we will take life as reflected in the mirror of the great 

dramatic art of the world 134 

And this will show us how the moral judgment is the chief faculty 

to which all that is great or intense in this art appeals 136 

We shall see this, for instance, in Macbeth 137 

In Hamlet 137 

In Antigone 137 

In Measure for Measure, and in Faust 138 



xvi CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

And also in degraded art just as well as in sublime art 139 

In profligate and cynical art, such as Congreve's 140 

And in concupiscent art 141 

Such as Mademoiselle de Maupin 141 

Or such works as that of Meursius, or the worst scenes in 

Petronius 142 

The supernatural moral judgment is the chief thing everywhere. 143 
Take away this judgment, and art loses all its strange interest. . . 144 

And so will it be with life 145 

The moral landscape will be ruined 145 

Even the mere sensuous joy of living in health will grow duller. . 146 
Nor will culture be of the least avail without the supernatural 

moral element ... 148 

Nor will the devotion to truth for its own sake, which is the last 

refuge of the positivists when in despair 149 

For this last has no meaning whatever, except as a form of con- 
crete theism 153 

The reverence for Nature is but another form of the devotion to 

truth, and its only possible meaning is equally theistic 157 

Thus all the higher resources of positivism fail together. ....... 161 

And the highest positive value of life would be something less 

than its present value 161 

CHAPTER. VII. 

THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 

From what we have just seen, the visionary character of the posi- 

tivist conception of progress becomes evident 163 

Its object is far more plainly an illusion than the Christian 

heaven 164 

All the objections urged against the latter apply with far more 

force to the former 165 

As a matter of fact, there is no possible object sufficient to start 

the enthusiasm required by the positivists 167 

To make the required enthusiasm possible human nature would 

have to be completely changed 168 

Two existing qualities, for instance, would have to be magnified 

to an impossible extent — imagination 169 

And unselfishness 170 



CONTENTS. xvii 

PAGE 

If we state the positive system in terms of common life, its vision- 
ary character becomes evident 173 

The examples which have suggested its possibility are quite mis- 
leading 173 

The positive system is really far more based on superstition than 

any religion 175 

Its appearance can only be accounted for by the characters and 

circumstances of its originators 175 

And a consideration of these will help us more than anything to 

estimate it rightly 178 

And will let us see that its only practical tendency is to deaden 

all our present interests, not to create any new ones. , 179 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PKACTICAL PKOSPECT. 

It is not contended that the prospect just described will, as a fact, 

ever be realised 183 

But only that it will be realised if certain other prospects are 

realised.... 185 

Which prospects may or may not be visionary 186 

But the progress towards which is already begun 187 

And also the other results, that have been described already 187 

Positive principles have already produced a moral deterioration, 

even in places where we should least imagine it ... 187 

As we shall see if we pierce beneath the surface 189 

In the curious condition of men who have lost faith, but have 

retained the love of virtue 189 

The struggle was hard, when they had all the helps of religion. . 190 

It is harder now 190 

Conscience still survives, but it has lost its restraining power. . . . 191 

Temptation almost inevitably dethrones it 193 

And its full prestige can never be recovered 193 

It can do nothing but deplore ; it cannot remedy 194 

In such cases the mind's decadence has begun ; and its symptoms 

are . 194 

Self-reproach 195 

Life-weariness 195 

And indifference 195 

B 



xviii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

The class of men to whom this applies is increasing, and they are 

the true representatives of the work of positive thought, . . 196 

It is hard to realise this ominous fact. ... 197 

But by looking steadily and dispassionately at the characteristics 

of the present epoch we may learn to do so 198 

We shall see that the opinions now forming will have a weight 

and power that no opinions ever had before 199 

And their tendency, as yet latent, towards pessimism is therefore 

most momentous , 200 

If it is to be cured, it must be faced 200 

It takes the form of a suppressed longing for the religious faith 

that is lost 200 

And this longing is wide-spread, though only expressed indirectly. 201 

It is felt even by men of science 203 

But the longing seems fruitless 203 

This dejection is in fact shared by the believers 203 

And is even authoritatively recognised by Catholicism 204 

The great question for the world now, and the one on which its 
whole future depends, is, will the lost faith ever be re- 
covered ? 205 

The answer to this will probably have to be decisive, one way or 
the other 206 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 

What gives the denials of positivism their general weight, is the 

impression that they represent reason 208 

They are supported by three kinds of arguments : physical, moral, 

and historical 209 

The two first bear upon all religion ; the latter only on special rev- 
elations 210 

Natural religion is the belief in God, immortality, and the possi- 
bility of miracles generally 210 

Physical science prefers to destroy natural religion by its connec- 
tion of mind with matter . . 210 

1st. Making conscious life a function of the brain. 2nd. Evolving 
the living organisms from lifeless matter. 3rd. Making this 
material evolution automatic 210 



CONTENTS. xix 

PAGE 

Thus all external proofs of God are destroyed. 212 

And also of the soul's immortality 213 

External proof is declared to be the test of reality 213 

And theiefore all religion is set down as a dream 215 

But we believe that proof is the test of reality, not because it is 
proved to be so, but because of the authority of those who 

tell us so 215 

But it will be found that these men do not understand their own 

I)rinciple 216 

And, that in Avhat they consider their most important conclusions 

they emphatically disregard it 217 

One or other, therefore, of their opinions is worthless — their de- 
nial of religion or their affirmation of morality 219 

But we shall see this more clearly in considering the question of 

consciousness and will 220 

We shall see that, as far as science can inform us, man is nothing 

but an automaton 220 

But the positive school are afraid to admit this 221 

And not daring to meet the question, they make a desperate effort 

to confuse it 222 

Two problems are involved in tlie matter : 1st. How is brain 

action connected with consciousness 223 

2nd. Is the consciousness that is connected with it something 

separable from, and independent of it 223 

The first of these problems has no bearing at all on any moral 
or religious question. It is insoluble. It leaves us not in 

doubt but in ignorance .... 224 

The doubt, and the religious question is connected solely with 

the second problem 228 

To which there are two alternative solutions 228 

And modern science is so confused that it will accept neither. . . . 228 
As Dr. Tyndall's treatment of the subject very forcibly shows us. 230 
And Dr. Tyndall in this way is a perfect representative of the 

whole modern positive school 231 

Let us compare the molecules of the brain to the sis moving bil- 
liard-balls 231 

The question is, are these movements due to the stroke of one 

cue or of two 233 

The positive school profess to answer this question both ways . . . 234 
But this profession is nonsense 336 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

What they really mean is, 1st. That the connection of conscious- 
ness with matter is a mystei-y ; as to that they can give no 
answer. Snd. That as to whether consciousness is wholly a 
material thing or no, they will give no answer 237 

But why are they in this state of suspense ? 238 

Though their system does not in the least require the hypothesis 

of an immaterial element in consciousness 239 

They see that the moral value of life does 239 

The same reasons that will warrant their saying it may exist, 

will constrain them to say it must 240 

Physical science, with its i^roofs, can say nothing in the matter, 

either as to will, immortality, or God 243 

But, on tlie other hand, it will force us, if we believe in will, to 

admit the reality of miracles 248 

So far as science goes, morality and religion are both on the same 
footing 243 

CHAPTER X. 

MORALITY AND NATUKAL THEISM. 

Supposing science not to be inconsistent -with theism, may not 

theism be inconsistent with morality ? 247 

It seems to be so ; but it is no more so than is morality with itself. 
Two difficulties common to both : — 1st. The exisience of 

evil ; 2nd. Man's free will and God's free will 248 

James Mill's statement of the case represents the popular anti-re- 
ligious arguments 249 

But his way of putting the case is full of distortion and exaggera- 
tion 250 

Though certain of the difficulties he pointed out were real 251 

And those we cannot explain away ; but if we are to believe in 

our moral being at all, we must one and all accept 252 

We can escape from them by none of the rationalistic substitutes 

for religion 252 

A similar difficulty is the freedom of the will 257 

This belief is an intellectual impossibility 258 

But at the same time a moral necessity 260 

It is typical of all the difficulties attendant on an assent to our 

own moral nature 260 

The v.T,guer difficulties that appeal to the moral imagination "we 

must meet in the same way 361 



CONTENTS. xxi 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE HUMAN KACE AND KEVELATION, 

PAGE 

bliould the intellect of the world return to theism, will it ever 

again acknowledge a special revelation ? 264 

We can see that this is an urgent question 265 

By many general considerations 265 

Especially the career of Protestantism 267 

Which is visibly evaporating into a mere natural theism 268 

And, as such, is losing all restraining power in the world 271 

Where then shall we look for a revelation 1 Not in any of the 

Eastern creeds 275 

The claims of the Eoman Church are the only ones worth consid- 
ering 276 

Her position is absolutely distinct from that of Protestantism, 

and she is not involved in its fall 277 

In theory she is all that the enlightened world could require. . . . 279 
The only question is, is she so in practice? This brings us to diffi- 
culties 282 

1st. The partial success of her revelation ; and her supposed con- 
demnation of the virtues of unbelievers. But her partial 

success is simply the old mystery of evil 282 

And through her infinite charity, she does nothing to increase 

that difiiculty 283 

The value of orthodoxy is analogous to the value of true physical 

science 285 

All should try to learn the truth who can ; but we do not con- 
demn others who cannot 286 

Even amongst Catholics generally no recondite theological knowl- 
edge is required , 287 

The facts of the Catholic religion are simple. Theology is the 

complex scientific explanation of them 288 

Catholicism is misunderstood because the outside world confuses 

with its religion — 1st. The complex explanations of it 289 

2nd. Matters of discipline, and practical rules 290 

3rd. The pious opinions, or the scientific errors of private per- 
sons, or particular epochs 291 

None of which really are any integral part of the Church 293 

Neither are the peculiar exaggerations of moral feeling that have 

been prevalent at different times 293 

The Church theoretically is a living, growing, self-adapting 
organism 295 



xxii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

She is, in fact, the growing, moral sense of mankind organised 

and developed under a supernatural tutelage 295 

CHAPTER XII. 
tJNIVERSAIi HISTOKY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHTJECH. 

We must now consider the Church in relation to history and ex- 
ternal historical criticism 297 

1st. The history of Christianity ; 2nd. The history of other relig- 
ions 398 

Criticism has robbed the Bible of nearly all the supposed inter- 
nal evidences of its supernatural character 298 

It has traced the chief Christian dogmas to non-Christian sources. 300 

It has shown that the histories of other religions are strangely 

analogous to the history of Christianity 300 

And to Protestantism these discoveries are fatal 302 

But they are not fatal to Catholicism, Avhose attitude to history is 
made utterly different by the doctrine of the perpetual infal- 
libility of the Church 305 

The Catholic Church teaches us to believe the Bible for her sake, 

not her for the Bible's , 305 

And even though her dogmas may have existed in some form 
elsewhere, they become new revelations to us, by her super- 
natural selection of them 306 

The Church is a living organism, for ever selecting and assimi- 
lating fresh nutriment 307 

Even from amongst the wisdom of her bitterest enemies 309 

All false revelations, in so far as they have professed to be infal- 
lible, are, from the Catholic standpoint, abortive Catholicisms. 311 

Catholicism has succeeded in the same attempt in which they 
have failed, 313 

CHAPTER XIII. 

BELIEF AND WILL. 

The aim of this book 315 

Has been to clear the great question as to man's nature, and the 
proper way of regarding him, from the confusion at present 

surrounding it 317 

And to show that the answer will finally rest, not on outer evi- 
dence, but on himself, and on his own will, if he have a will. 319 



NOTE. 

Ik this book the words 'positive,'' 'positivisf,' and 'posi- 
tivism ' are of constant occurrence as apjDlied to modern 
thought and thinkers. To avoid any chance of confusion or 
misconception, it will be vrell to say that these words as used 
by me have no special reference to the system of Comte or 
his disciples, but are applied to the common views and posi- 
tion of the whole scientific school, one of the most eminent 
members of which — I mean Professor Huxley — has been the 
most trenchant and contemptuous critic that 'positivism ' in 
its narrower sense has met with. Over ' positivism ' in this 
sense Professor Huxley and Mr. Frederic Harrison have had 
some public battles. Positivism in the sense in which it is 
used by me, applies to the principles as to which the above 
writers explicitly agree, not to those as to which they differ. 

W. H. M. 



Is Life Worth Living? 



CHAPTER I. 

THE NEW IMPOET OF THE QUESTIOIS". 

A change was coming over the world, the meaning and direction of 
whicJi even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. — Froude's 
History of England, cli. i. 

What I am about to deal with in this book is a 
question which may well strike many, at first sight, 
as a question that has no serious meaning, or none 
at any rate for the sane and healthy mind. I am 
about to attempt inquiring, not sentimentally, but 
with all calmness and sobriety, into the true value of 
this human life of ours, as tried by those tests of 
reality which the modern world is accepting, and to 
ask dispassionately if it be really worth the living. 
The inquiry certainly has often been made before ; 
but it has never been made properly ; it has never 
been made in the true scientific spirit. It has always 
been vitiated either by diffidence or by personal 
feeling ; and the positive school, though they rejoice 
to question everything else, have, at least in this 

1 



2 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

country, left the worth of life alone. They may now 
and then, perhaps, have affected to examine it ; but 
their examination has been merely formal, like that 
of a custom-house officer, who passes a portmanteau 
which he has only o]3ened. They have been as ten- 
der with it as Don Quixote was with his mended 
helmet, when he would not put his card-paper vizor 
to the test of the steel sword. I propose to supply 
this deficiency in their investigations. I jDropose to 
apply exact thought to the only great subject to 
which it has not been applied already. 

To numbers, as I have Just said, this will of course 
seem useless. They will think that the question 
never really was an open one ; or that, if it ever 
were so, the common sense of mankind has long ago 
finally settled it. To ask it again, they will think 
idle, or worse than idle. It will express to them, if 
it expresses anything, no perplexity of- the intellect, 
but merely some vague disease of the feelings. 
They will say that it is but the old ejaculation of 
satiety or despair, as old as human nature itself ; it 
is a kind of maundering common to all moral dys- 
pepsia; they have often heard it before, and they 
wish they may never hear it again. 

But let them be a little less impatient. Let them 
look at the question closer, and more calmly ; and it 
will not be long before its import begins to change 
for them. They will see that though it may have 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 3 

often been asked idly, it is yet capable of a meaning 
that is very far from idle ; and that however old they 
may think it, yet as asked by our generation it is 
really completely new — that it bears a meaning 
which is indeed not far from any one of them, but 
which is practical and pressing — I might almost say 
portentous — and which is something literally unex- 
ampled in the past history of mankind, 

I am aware that this position is not only not at 
first sight obvious, but that, even when better under- 
stood, it will probably be called false. My first 
care, therefore, will be to explain it at length, and 
clearly. For this purpose we must consider two 
points in order ; first, what is the exact doubt we 
intend to express by our question ; and next, why 
in our day this doubt should have such a special 
and fresh significance. 

Let us then make it quite plain, at starting, that 
when we ask ' Is life worth living 1 ' we are not 
asking whether its balance of pains is necessarily and 
always in excess of its balance of pleasures. We 
are not asking whether any one has been, or whether 
any one is happy. To the un Jaundiced eye nothing 
is more clear than that happiness of various kinds 
has been, and is, continually attained by men. And 
ingenious pessimists do but waste their labour when 
they try to convince a happy man that he really 
must be miserable. What I am going to discuss is 



4 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

not the superfluous truism that life has been found 
worth living by many ; but the profoundly different 
proposition that it ought to be found worth living by 
all. For this is what life is pronounced to be, when 
those claims are made for it that at present univer- 
sally are made ; when, as a general truth, it is said 
to be worth living ; or when any of those august 
epithets are applied to it that are at present api)lied 
so constantly. At present, as we all know, it is 
called sacred, solemn, earnest, significant, and so 
forth. To withhold such epithets is considered a 
kind of blasphemy. And the meaning of all such 
language is this : it means that life has some deep 
inherent worth of its own, beyond what it can acquire 
or lose by the caprice of circumstance — a worth, 
which though it may be most fully revealed to a 
man, through certain forms of success, is yet not de- 
stroyed or made a minus quantity by failure. Cer- 
tain forms of love, for instance, are held in a special 
way to reveal this worth to us ; but the worth that 
a successful love is thus supposed to reveal is a worth 
that a hopeless love is supposed not to destroy. 
The worth is a part of life's essence, not a mere 
chance accident, as health or riches are ; and we are 
supposed to lose it by no acts but our own. 

I^ow it is evident that such a worth as this, is, in 
one sense, no mere fancy. Numbers actually have 
found it ; and numbers actually stiU continue to find 



TEE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTIOIf. 5 

it. The question is not whether the worth exists, 
bnt on what is the worth based. How far is the 
treasure incorruptible ; and how far will our increas- 
ing knowledge act as moth and rust to it ? There 
are some things whose value is completely estab- 
lished by the mere fact that men do value them. 
They appeal to single tastes, they defy further anal- 
ysis, and they thus form, as it were, the bases of all 
j)leasures and happiness. But these are few in num- 
ber ; they are hardly ever met with in a perfectly 
pure state ; and their effect, when they are so met, is 
either momentary, or far from vivid. As a rule they 
are found in combinations of great complexity, fused 
into an infinity of new substances by the action of 
beliefs and associations ; and these two agents are 
often of more importance in the result than are the 
things they act upon. Take for instance a boy at 
Eton or Oxford, who affects a taste in wine. Give 
him a bottle of gooseberry champagne ; tell him it is 
of the finest brand, and that it cost two hundred 
shillings a dozen. He will sniff, and wink at it in 
ecstasy ; he will sip it slowly with an air of knowing 
reverence ; and his enjoyment of it probably will be 
far keener, than it would be, were the wine really all 
he fancies it, and he had lived years enough to have 
come to discern its qualities. Here the part played 
by belief and associations is of course evident. The 
boy's enjoyment is real, and it rests to a certain ex- 



6 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

tent on a foundation of solid fact ; the taste of the 
gooseberry champagne is an actual pleasure to his 
palate. Anything nauseous, black dose for instance, 
could never raise him to the state of delight in 
question. But this simj^le pleasure of sense is but a 
small part of the pleasure he actually experiences. 
That pleasure, as a whole, is a highly complex thing, 
and rests mainly on a basis that, by a little knowl- 
edge, could be annihilated in a moment. Tell the 
boy what the champagne really is, he has been 
praising ; and the state of his mind and face will 
undergo a curious transformation. Our sense of the 
worth of life is similar in its com]3lexity to the boy's 
sense of the worth of his wine. Beliefs and associations 
play exactly the same part in it. The beliefs in this 
last case may of course be truer. The question that 
I have to ask is, are they ? In some individual cases 
certainly, they have not been. Miss Harriet Marti- 
neau, for instance, judging life from her own expe- 
rience of it, was quite persuaded that it was a most 
solemn and satisfactory thing, and she has told the 
world as much, in no hesitating manner. But a part 
at least of the solemn satisfaction she felt in it was 
due to a grotesque over-estimate of her own social 
and intellectual importance. Here, then, was a 
worth in life, real enough to the person who found 
it, but which a little knowledge of the world would 
have at once taken away from her. Does the gen- 



TEE NEW IMPOBT OF THE QUESTION. 7 

eral reverence with whicli life is at present regarded 
rest in any degree upon any similar misconception 1 
And if so, to what extent does it 1 Will it fall to 
pieces before the breath of a larger knowledge ? or 
has it that firm foundation in fact that will enable it 
to survive in spite of all enlightenment, and perhaps 
even to increase in consequence of it ? 

Such is the outline of the question I propose to 
deal with, I will now show why it is so pressing, 
and why, in the present crisis of thought, it is so 
needful that it should be dealt with. The first im- 
pression it produces, as I have said, is that it is 
superfluous. Our belief in life seems to rest on too 
wide an experience for us to entertain any genuine 
doubt of the truth of it. But this first imx)ression 
does not go for much. It is a mere superficial thing, 
and will wear off immediately. "We have but to 
remember that a belief that was supposed to rest on 
an equally wide basis — the belief in God, and in a 
supernatural order — has in these days, not been 
questioned only, but has been to a great degree, 
successfully annihilated. The only philosophy that 
belongs to the present age, the only philosophy that 
is a really new agent in progress, has declared this 
belief to be a dissolving dream of the past. And 
this belief, as we shall see presently, is, amongst 
civilized men at least, far older than the belief in 
life ; it has been far more widely spread, and expe- 



8 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

rience lias been lield to confirm it with an equal cer- 
tainty. If this then is inevitably disintegrated by 
the action of a widening knowledge, it cannot be 
taken for granted that the belief in life will not fare 
likewise. It may do so ; but until we have ex- 
amined it more closely we cannot be certain that it 
will. Common consent and experience, until they 
are analysed, are fallacious tests for the seekers after 
positive truth. The emotions may forbid us to ask 
our question ; but in modern philosophy the emo- 
tions play no part as organs of discovery. They 
are facts in themselves, and as such are of course 
of value ; but they point to no facts beyond them- 
selves. That men loved God and felt his pres- 
ence close to them proves nothing, to the positive 
thinker, as to God's existence. Nor will the mere 
emotion of reverence towards life necessarily go any 
farther towards proving that it deserves reverence. 
It is distinctly asserted by the modern school that 
the right state in which to approach everything is a 
state of enlightened scepticism. We are to consider 
everything doubtful, until it is proved certain, or 
unless, from its very nature, it is not possible to 
doubt it. 

!N'or is this all ; for, apart from these modern 
canons, the question of life' s worth has, as a matter 
of fact, been always recognised as in a certain sense 
an open one. The greatest intellects of the world, 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 9 

in all ages, have been at times inclined to donbt it. 
And these times have not seemed to them times of 
blindness ; bnt on the contrary, of specially clear 
insight. Scales, as it were, have fallen from their 
eyes for a moment or two, and the beauty and worth 
of existence has appeared to them as but a deceiv- 
ing show. An entire book of the Hebrew Scriptures 
is devoted to a deliberate exposition of this philoso- 
phy. In ' tJie most Jiigh and palmy state ' of Athens 
it was expressed fitfully also as the deepest msdom 
of her most triumphant dramatist.' And in Shak- 
speare it appears so constantly, that it must evi- 
dently have had for him some directly personal 
meaning. 

This view, however, even by most of those w^ho 
have held it, has been felt to be really only a half- 
view in the guise of a whole one. To Shakspeare, 
for instance, it was full of a profound terror. It 
crushed, and appalled, and touched him ; and there 
was not only implied in it that for us life does mean 
little, but that by some possibility it might have 
meant much. Or else, if the pessimism has been 
more complete than this, it has probably been 
adopted as a kind of solemn affectation, or has else 
been lamented as a form of diseased melancholy. It 
is a view that healthy intellects have hitherto declined 

' Vide Sophocles, (Edipus Coloneus. 



10 18 LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

to entertain. Its advocates have been met with 
neglect, contempt, or castigation, not with arguments. 
They have been pitied as insane, avoided as cynical, 
or passed over as frivolous. And yet, but for one 
reason, to that whole European world whose pro- 
gress we are now inheriting, this view would have 
seemed not only not untenable, but even obvious. 
The emptiness of the things of this life, the incom- 
pleteness of even its highest pleasures, and their 
utter powerlessness to make us really happy, has 
been, at least for fifteen hundred years, a common- 
place, both with saints and sages. The conception 
that anything in this life could of itself be of any 
great moment to us, was considered as much a 
puerility unworthy of a man of the world, as a dis- 
loyalty to God. Experience of life, and meditation 
on life, seemed to teach nothing but the same lesson, 
seemed to preach a sermon de contemptu Tnundi. 
The view the eager monk began with, the sated 
monarch ended with. But matters did not end here. 
There was something more to come, by which this 
view was altogether transmuted, and which made 
the wilderness and the waste place at once blossom 
as the rose. Judged of by itself, this life would in- 
deed be vanity ; but it was not to be judged of by 
itself. All its ways seemed to break short aimlessly 
into precipices, or to be lost hopelessly in deserts. 
They led to no visible end. True ; but they led to 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. \\ 

ends that were invisible — to spiritual and eternal 
destinies, to triumphs beyond all hope, and porten- 
tous failures beyond all fear. This all men might 
see, if they would only choose to see. The most 
trivial of our daily actions became thus invested 
with an immeasurable meaning. Life was thus 
e\ddently not vanity, not an idiot's tale, not un- 
profitable ; those who affected to think it was,, were 
naturally disregarded as either insane or insincere : 
and we may thus admit that hitherto, for the pro- 
gressive nations of the world, the worth of life has 
been capable of demonstration, and safe beyond the 
reach of any rational questioning. 

But now, under the influence of positive thought, 
all this is changing. Life, as we have all of us in- 
herited it, is coloured with the intense colours of 
Christianity ; let us ourselves be personally Chris- 
tians or not, we are instinct with feelings with regard 
to it that were applicable to it in its Christian state : 
and these feelings it is that we are still resolved to 
retain. As the most popular English exponent of 
the new school says : ' All positwe metliods of treat- 
ing man, of a comprehenswe kind, adopt to tlie full 
all that has emr heen said about the dignity of 
inai-C s moral and spiritual life.'' But here comes 
the difficulty. This adoption we speak of must be 
Justified upon quite new reasons. Indeed it is prac- 
tically the boast of its advocates that it must be. 



12 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

An extreme value, as we see, they are resolved to 
give to life ; they will not tolerate those who deny 
its existence. But they are obliged to find it in the 
very place where hitherto it has been thought to be 
conspicuous by its absence. It is to be found in no 
better or wider future, where injustice shall be turned 
to justice, trouble into rest, and blindness into clear 
sight ; for no such future awaits us. It is to be 
found in life itself, in this earthly life, this life 
between the cradle and the grave ; and though im- 
agination and sympathy may enlarge and extend 
this for the individual, yet the limits of its exten- 
sion are very soon arrived at. It is limited by the 
time the human race can exist, by the space in'^the 
universe that the human race occupies, and the 
capacities of enjoyment that the human race pos- 
sesses. Here, then, is a distinct and intelligible task 
that the positive thinkers have set themselves. They 
have taken everything away from life that to wise 
men hitherto has seemed to redeem it from vanity. 
They have to prove to us that they have not left it 
vain. They have to prove those things to be solid that 
have hitherto been thought hollow ; those things to 
be serious that have hitherto been thought contemp- 
tible. They must prove to us that we shall be con- 
tented with what has never yet contented us, and that 
the widest minds will thrive within limits that have 
hitherto been thought too narrow for the narrowest. 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 13 

N'ow, of course, so far ris we can tell without ex- 
amining the matter, they may be able to accomplish 
this revolution. There is no tiling on the face of it 
that is impossible. It may be that our eyes are only 
blinded to the beauty of the earth by having gazed 
so long and so vainly into an empty heaven, and that 
w^hen we have learnt to use them a little more to the 
purpose, we shall see close at hand in this life what 
we had been looking for, all this while, in another. 
But still, even if this revolution be possible, the fact 
remains that it is a revolution, and it cannot be ac- 
complished without some effort. Our positive think- 
ers have a case to be proved. They must not beg the 
very point that is most open to contradiction, and 
which, when once duly apprehended, will be most 
sure to provoke it. If this life be not incapable of 
satisfying us, let them show us conclusively that it is 
not. But they can hardly expect that, without any 
such showing at all, the world will deliberately repel 
as a blasphemy what it has liitherto accepted as a 
common-place. 

This objection is itself so obvious that it has not 
escaped notice. But the very fact of its obviousness 
has tended to hide the true force of it, and coming so 
readily to the surface, it has been set down as super- 
ficial. It is, however, very constantly recognised, 
and is being met on all sides with a very elaborate 
answer. It is this answer that I shall now proceed to 



14 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

consider. It is a very important one, and it deserves 
our most close attention, as it contains the chief 
present argument for the positive faith in life. I 
shall show how this argument is vitiated by a funda- 
mental fallacy. 

It is admitted that to a hasty glance there may cer- 
tainly seem some danger of our faith in life' s value 
collapsing, together with our belief in God. It is 
admitted that this is not in the least UTational. But 
it is contended that a scientific study of the past will 
show us that these fears are groundless, and will re- 
assure us as to the future. We are referred to a new 
branch of knowledge, the philosophy of history, and 
we are assured that by this all our doubts will be set 
at rest. This philosophy of history resembles, on an 
extended scale, the practical wisdom learnt by the 
man of the world. As long as a man is inexperienced 
and new to life, each calamity as it comes to him 
seems something unique and overwhelming, but as 
he lives on, sujffers more of them, and yet finds that 
he is not overwhelmed, he learns to reduce them to 
their right dimensions, and is able, with sufiicient 
self-possession, to let each of them teach some useful 
lesson to him. 

Thus we, it is said, if we were not better instructed, 
might naturally take the present decline of faith to 
be an unprecedented calamity that was ushering in 
an eve of darkness and utter ruin. But the philoso- 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 15 

phy of history puts the whole matter in a different 
light. It teaches us that the condition of the world 
in our day, though not normal, is yet by no means 
peculiar. It points to numerous parallels in former 
ages, and treats the rise and fall of creeds as regular 
phenomena in human history, whose causes and re- 
currence we can distinctly trace. Other nations and 
races have had creeds, and have lost them ; they 
have thought, as some of us think, that the loss 
would ruin them : and yet they have not been 
ruined. Creeds, it is contended, were imaginative, 
provisional, and mistaken expressions of the un- 
derlying and indestructible sense of the nobility of 
human life. They were artistic, not scientific. A 
statue of Apollo, for instance, or a picture of the Ma- 
donna, were really representations of what men aimed 
at producing on earth, not of what actually had any 
existence in heaven. And if we look back at the 
greatest civilisations of antiquity, we shall find, it is 
said, that what gave them vigour and intensity were 
purely human interests : and though religion may cer- 
tainly have had some reflex action on life, this action 
was either merely political or was else injurious. 

It is thus that that intense Greek life is presented 
to us, the influence of which is still felt in the world. 
Its main stimulus we are told was frankly human. 
It would have lost none of its keenness if its theology 
had been taken from it. And there, it is said, we see 



16 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING 1 

the positive worth of life ; we see already realised 
what we are now growing to realise once more. Chris- 
tianity, with its supernatural aims and objects, is 
spoken of as an ' episode of disease and delirium ; ' 
it is a confusing dream, from which we are at last 
awaking ; and the feelings of the modern school are 
expressed in the following sentence of a distin- 
guished modern writer : ' '■ Just as the traneller,'^ he 
says, ' wJio lias been worn to the done by years of 
weary strimng among men of another sJcin, suddenly 
gazes with doubting eyes upon the white face of a 
brother^ so if we tr artel backwards in thought orier the 
darker ages of the history of Europe we at length 
reach back with such bounding heart to men who had 
like hopes with ourselces, and shake hands across 
that Tiast with . . . our own spiritual ancestors.^ 

]^or are the Greeks the only nation whose history 
is supposed to be thus so reassuring to us. The ear- 
ly Jews are pointed to, in the same way, as having 
felt pre-eminently the dignity of this life, and having 
yet been absolutely without any belief in another. 
But the example, which for us is perhaps the most 
forcible of all, is to be found in the history of Rome, 
during her years of widest activity. We are told to 
look at such men as Cicero or as Ceesar — above all to 

' Professor Clifford, whose study of history leads bim to regard Catho- 
licism as nothing more than an ' episode' in the history of Western 
progress. 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION'. Yt 

sucli men as Csesar — and to remember what a reality 
life was to them, Csesar certainly had little religion 
enough ; and what he may have had, played no part 
in making his life earnest. He took the world as he 
found it, as all healthy men have taken it ; and, as it 
is said, all healthy men will still continue to take it. 
Nor was such a life as Caesar's peculiar to himself. 
It represents that purely human life that flourished 
generally in such vigour amongst the Romans. And 
the consideration of it is said to be all the more in- 
structive, because it flourished in the face of Just the 
same conditions that we think so disheartening now. 
There was in those times, as there is in ours, a wide 
disintegration of the old faiths ; and to many, then 
as now, this fact seemed at once sad and terrifying. 
As we read Juvenal, Petronius, Lucian, or Apuleius, 
we are astounded at the likeness of those times to 
these. Even in minute details, they correspond 
with a marvellous exactness. And hence there 
seems a strange force in the statement that history 
repeats itself, and that the wisdom learnt from the 
past can be applied to the present and the future. 

But all this, though it is doubtless true, is in re- 
ality only half the truth ; and as used in the argu- 
ments of the day, it amounts practically to a pro- 
found falsehood. History in a certain sense, of 
course, does repeat itself ; and the thing that has 
been is in a certain sense the thing that shall be. 
2 



18 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

But there is a deeper and a wider sense in wMcli 
this is not so. Let us take tlie life of an individual 
man, for instance. A man of fifty will retain very 
likely many of the tastes and tricks that were his, 
when a boy of ten : and people who have known 
him long will often exclaim that he is just the same 
as he always was. But in spite of this, they will 
know that he is very different. His hopes will have 
dwindled down ; the glow, the colour, and the bright 
haze will have gone from them ; things that once 
amused him will amuse him no more : things he 
once thought important, he wdll consider weary tri- 
fles ; and if he thinks anything serious at all, they 
will not be things he thought serious when a boy. 
The same thing is true of the year, and its changing 
seasons. The history of a single year may be, in 
one sense, said to repeat itself every day. There is 
the same recurrence of light and darkness, of sun- 
rise and of sunset : and a man who had lived only 
for a month or two, might fancy that this recurrence 
was complete. But let him live a little longer, and 
he will come to see that this is not so. Slowly 
through the summer he will begin to discern a 
change ; until at last he can contrast the days and 
nights of winter with the days and nights of sum- 
mer, and see how flowers that once opened fresh 
every morning, now never open or close at all. Then 
he will see that the two seasons, though in many 



TEE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 19 

points SO like each other, are yet, in a far deeper 
way, different. 

And so it is with the world's history. Isolate cer- 
tain phenomena, and they do, without doubt, repeat 
themselves ; but it is only when isolated that they 
can be said to do so. In many points the European 
thought and civilisation of to-day may seem to be a 
repetition of what has been before ; we may fancy 
that we recognise our brothers in the past, and that 
we can, as the writer above quoted says, shake 
hands with them across the intervening years. But 
this is really only a deceiving fancy, when applied to 
such deep and universal questions as those we have 
now to deal with — to religion, to positive thought, 
and to the worth of life. The positivists and the 
unbelievers of the modern world, are not the same as 
those of the ancient world. Even when their lan- 
guage is identical, there is an immeasurable gulf be- 
tween them. In our denials and assertions there 
are certain new factors, which at once make all such 
comparisons worthless. The importance of these 
will by-and-by appear more clearly, but I shall give 
a brief account of them now. 

The first of these factors is the existence of Chris- 
tianity, and that vast and undoubted change in the 
world of which it has been at once the cause and the 
index. It has done a work, and that work stUl re- 
mains : and we all feel the effects of it, whether we 



20 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

will or no. Described in the most general way, tliat 
work has been this. The suijernatural, in the ancient 
world, was something vague and indefinite : and the 
classical theologies at any rate, though they were to 
some extent formal embodiments of it, could em- 
body really but a very small part. Zeus and the 
Olympian hierarchies w^ere dimly perceived to be en- 
circled by some vaster mystery ; which to the popu- 
lar mind was altogether formless, and which even 
such men as Plato could only describe inadequately. 
The supernatural was like a dim and diffused light, 
brighter in some places, and darker in others, but 
focalised and concentrated nowhere. Christianity 
has focalised it, united into one the scattered points 
of brightness, and collected other rays that were be- 
fore altogether imperceptible. That vague ' idea of 
the good,'^ of which Plato said most men dimly 
augured the existence, but could not express their 
augury, has been given a definite shape to by Chris- 
tianity in the form of its Deity. That Deity, from 
an external point of view, may be said to have ac- 
quired His sovereignty as did the Roman Caesar. 
He absorbed into His own person the ofiices of all 
the gods that were before him, as the Roman Csesar 
absorbed all the ofiices of the state ; and in His case 
also, as has been said of the Roman Csesar, the 
whole was immeasurably greater than the mere sum 
of the parts. Scientifically and philosophically He 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 21 

became the first cause of the world ; He became the 
father of the human soul, and its judge ; and what 
is more, its rest and its delight, and its desire. Un- 
der the light of this conception, man appeared an 
ampler being. His thoughts were for ever being 
gazed on by the great controller of all things ; he 
was made in the likeness of the Lord of lords ; he 
was of kin to the power before which all the visible 
w^orld trembled ; and every detail in the life of a 
human soul became vaster, beyond all comparison, 
than the depths of space and time. But not only 
did the sense of man's dignity thus develop, and 
become definite. The accompanying sense of his 
degradation became intenser and more definite also. 
The gloom of a sense of sin is to be found in ^schy- 
lus, but this gloom was vague and formless. Chris- 
tianity gave to it both depth and form ; only the 
despair that might have been produced in this way 
was now softened by hope. Christianity has, in 
fact, declared clearly a supernatural of which men 
before were more or less ignorantly conscious. The 
declaration may or may not have been a complete 
one, but at any rate it is the completest that the 
world has yet known. And the practical result is 
this : when we, in these days, deny the supernatu- 
ral, we are denying it in a way in which it was 
never denied before. Our denial is beyond all 
comparison more complete. The supernatural, for 



22 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

the ancient world, was like a perfume scenting life, 
out of a 'hundred different vessels, of which only 
two or three were visible to the same men or nations. 
They therefore might get rid of these, and yet the 
larger part of the scent would still remain to them. 
But for us, it is as though all the perfume had been 
collected into a single vessel ; and if we get rid of 
this, we shall get rid of the scent altogether. Our 
air will be altogether odourless. 

The materialism of Lucretius is a good instance of 
this. In many ways his denials bear a strong re- 
semblance to ours. But the resemblance ceases a 
little below the surface. He denied the theology of 
his time as strongly as our positive thinkers deny 
the theology of ours. But the theology he denied 
was incomplete and puerile. He was not denying 
any ' All-embracer and All-sustainer,' for he knew 
of none such. And his denial of the gods he did 
deny left him room for the affirmation of others, 
whose existence, if considered accurately, was equal- 
ly inconsistent with his own scientific premisses. 
Again, in his denial of any immortality for man, 
what he denied is not the future that we are deny- 
ing. The only future he knew of was one a belief 
in which had no influence on us, except for sadness. 
It was a protraction only of what is worst in life ; it 
was in no way a completion of what is best in it. 
But with us the case is altogether different. For- 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 23 

merly the supernatural could not be denied com- 
pletely, because it was not known completely. Not 
to affirm is a very different thing from to deny. And 
many beliefs which the positivists of the modern 
world are denying, the positivists of the ancient 
world more or less consciously lived by. 

Next, there is this point to remember. Whilst 
during the Christian centuries, the devotion to a su- 
pernatural and extramundane aim has been engen- 
dering, as a recent writer has observed with indigna- 
tion, a degrading '■pessimism as to the essential dig- 
nity of man,'^ ^ i\\Q world which we have been to a 
certain extent disregarding has been changing its 
character for us. In a number of ways, whilst we 
have not been perceiving it, its objective grandeur 
has been dwindling ; and the imagination, when 
again called to the feat, cannot reinvest it with its 
old gorgeous colouring. Once the world, with the 
human race, who were the masters of it, was a thing 
of vast magnitude — the centre of the whole creation. 
The mind had no larger conceptions that were vivid 
enough to dwarf it. But now all this has changed. 
In the words of a well-known modern English histo- 
rian, ' Tlie floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, 7ias 
sunk hack into an infinite abyss of immeasurahle 
space ; and the firm earth itself unfixed from its 

^ Mr. Frederic Harrison. 



24 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

foundations^ is seen to he hut a small atom in the 
awful vastness of tlie universe.'' ' The whole posi- 
tion, indeed, is reversed. The skies once seemed to 
pay the earth homage, and to serve it with light and 
shelter. ISTow they do nothing, so far as the imagi- 
nation is concerned, but spurn and dwarf it. And 
when we come to the details of the earth's surface 
itself, the case is Just the same. It, in its extent, 
has grown little and paltry to us. The wonder and 
the mystery has gone from it. A Cockney excur- 
sionist goes round it in a holiday trip ; there are no 

Golden cities, ten months journey deep. 
In far Tartarian wilds ;'^ 

nor do the confines of civilisation, melt as they once 
did, into any unknown and unexplored wonderlands. 
And thus a large mass of sentiment that was once 
powerful in the world is now rapidly dwindling, and, 
- so far as we can see, there is nothing that can ever 
exactly replace it. Patriotism, for instance, can 
never again be the religion it was to Athens, or the 
pride it was to Rome. Men are not awed and moved 
as once they w^ere by local and material splendours. 
The pride of life, it is true, is still eagerly coveted ; 
but by those at least who are most familiar with it, 
it is courted and sought for with a certain contempt 

I Mr. Fronde, History of England, chap. i. 
* Wordsworttu 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 25 

and cynicism. It is treated like a courtesan, rather 
than like a goddess. Whilst as to the higher enthu- 
siasm that was once excited by external things, the 
world in its present state could no more work itself 
Tip to this than a girl, after three seasons, could 
again go for dissipation to her dolls. She might 
look back to the time of dolls wdth regret. She 
might see that the interest they excited in her was, 
perhaps, far more pleasing than any she had found 
in love. But the dolls would never rival her lovers, 
none the less. And with man, and his aims and ob- 
jects, the case is just the same. And we must re- 
member that to realise keenly the potency of a past 
ideal, is no indication that practically it will ever 
again be powerful. 

Briefly, then, the positive school of to-day we see 
thus far to be in this position. It has to make de- 
mands upon human life that were never made be- 
fore ; and human life is, in many ways, less able than 
it ever w^as to answer to them. 

But this is not all. There is a third matter yet 
left to consider — a third factor in the case, peculiar 
to the present crisis. That is the intense self -con- 
sciousness that is now developed in the world, and 
which is something altogether new to it. During 
the last few generations man has been curiously 
changing. Much of his old spontaneity of action 
has gone from him. He has become a creature look- 



26 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

ing before and after ; and his native hue of resolu- 
tion has been sickled over by thought. We admit 
nothing now without question ; we have learnt to 
take to pieces all motives to actions. We not only 
know more than we have done before, but we are 
perpetually chewing the cud of our knowledge. 
Thus positive thought reduces all religions to ideals 
created by man ; and as such, not only admits that 
they have had vast influence, but teaches us also 
that we in the future must construct new ideals for 
ourselves. Only there will be this difference. We 
shall now know that they are ideals, we shall no 
longer mistake them for objective facts. But our 
positive thinkers forget this. They forget that the 
ideals that were once active in the world w^ere active 
amongst people who thought that they were more 
than ideals, and who very certainly did mistake 
them for facts ; and they forget how different their 
position will be, as soon as their true nature is re- 
cognised. There is no example, so far as I know, to 
be found in all history, of men having been stimu- 
lated or affected in any important way — none, at any 
rate, of their having been restrained or curbed — by 
a mere ideal that was known to have no reality to 
correspond to it. A child is frightened when its 
nurse tells it that a black man will come down the 
chimney and take it away. The black man, it is 
true, is only an ideal ; and yet the child is affected. 



TEE NEW IMPORT OF THE Q UESTION. 27 

But it would cease to be affected the instant it knew 
this. 

As we go on wdth our enquiry these considerations 
will become plainer to us. But enough has even 
now been said to show how distinct the present po- 
sition is from any that have gone before it, and how 
little the experience of the past is really fitted to re- 
assure us. Greek and Roman thought was positive, 
in our sense of the word, only in a very small degree. 
The thought of the other ancient empires was not 
positive at all. The oldest civilisation of which any 
record is left to us — the civilisation of Egypt — was 
based on a theism which, of all other theisms, most 
nearly approaches ours. And the doctrine of a fu- 
ture life was first learnt by the Jews from their mas- 
ters during the Captivity. We search utterly in 
vain through history for any parallel to our own 
negations. 

I have spoken hitherto of those peoples only 
whose history more or less directly has affected 
ours. But there is a vast portion of the human race 
with which, roughly speaking, our progress has had 
no connection ; and the religions of these races, 
which are now for the first time beginning to be ac- 
curately studied, are constantly being appealed to 
in support of the positive doctrines. Thus it is 
urged by Mr. Leslie Stephen that ' tJie briefest out- 
line of tTie religious history of mankind sliows that 



28 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

creeds which can count more adherents than Chris- 
tianity, and have flourished through a longer pe- 
riod, have omitted all that maizes the Christian doc- 
trine of a future state valuable in the eyes of the 
supporters ; ' and Dr. Tyndall points with the same 
delighted confidence to the gospel of Buddhism, as 
one of ^ pure human ethics, divorced not only from 
Brahma and the Brdhminic Trinity, hut even from 
the existence of God.''^ Many other such appeals 
are made to what are somewhat vaguely called ' the 
multitudinous creeds of the East;'' but it is to 
Buddhism, in its various forms, that they would all 
seem to apply. Let us now consider the real result 
of them. Our positivists have appealed to Bud- 
dhism, and to Buddhism they shall certainly go. 
It is one of the vastest and most significant of 
all human facts. But its significance is some- 
what different from what it is popularly supposed 
to be. 

That the Buddhist religion has had a wide hold 
on the world is true. Indeed, forty per cent, of the 
whole human race at this moment profess it. Ex- 
cept the Judaic, it is the oldest of existing creeds ; 
and beyond all comparison it numbers most adhe- 
rents. And it is quite true also that it does not, in 
its pure state, base its teaching on the belief in any 
personal God, or offer as an end of action any happi- 

' Quoted bj Dr. Tyndall from Professor Blackie. 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 29 

ness in any immortal life. But it does not for this 
reason bear any real resemblance to our modern 
Western positivism, nor give it any reason to be san- 
guine. On tlie contrary, it is most absolutely op- 
posed to it ; and its success is due to doctrines wMch 
Western positivism most emjphatically repudiates. 
In the first place, so far from being based on exact 
thought. Buddhism takes for its very foundation 
four great mysteries, that are explicitly beyond the 
reach either of proof or reason ; and of these the 
foremost and most intelligible is the transmigration 
and renewal of the existence of the individual. It is 
by this mystical doctrine, and by this alone, that 
Buddhism gains a hold on the common heart of 
man. This is the great fulcrum of its lever. Then 
further — and this is more important still — whereas 
the doctrine of Western positivism is that human 
life is good, or may be made good ; and that in the 
possibility of the enjoyment of it consists the great 
stimulus to action ; the doctrine of Buddhism is that 
human life is evil, and that man' s right aim is not to 
gratify, but to extinguish, his desire for it. Love, 
for instance, as I have said before, is by most West- 
ern positivists held to be a high blessing. Buddhism 
tells us we should avoid it ' as tliough it were a pit 
of 'burning coals. ^ The most influential positive 
writer in England ' has said : ' / desire no future 

' George Eliot. 



30 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

tliat will hrea7c the ties of the past.'' BuddMsm says 
that we should desire no present that will create any 
ties for the future. The beginning of the Buddhist 
teaching is the intense misery of life ; the reward of 
Buddhist holiness is to, at last, live no longer. If 
we die in our sins, we shall be obliged to live again 
on the earth ; and it will not be, perhaps, till after 
many lives that the necessity for fresh births will be 
exhausted. But when we have attained perfection, 
the evil spell is broken ; and ' then the wise man,'' it 
is said, ' is extinguished as this lamp.'' The highest 
life was one of seclusion and asceticism. The found- 
er of Buddhism was met, during his first preach- 
ing, with the objection that his system, if carried 
out fully, would be the ruin and the extermination 
of humanity. And he did not deny the charge ; but 
said that what his questioners called ruin, was in 
reality the highest good. 

It is then hard to conceive an appeal more singu- 
larly infelicitous than that which our modern posi- 
tivists make to Buddhism. It is the appeal of 
optimists to inveterate pessimists, and of exact 
thinkers to inveterate mystics. If the consideration 
of it tells us anything of importance, it tells us this 
— that by far the largest mass of mankind that has 
ever been united by a single creed has explicitly 
denied every chief point that our Western teachers 
assert. So far then from heljping to close the ques- 



THE NEW IMPORT OF THE QUESTION. 31 

tion we are to deal witli — the question as to the 
positive worth of life, the testimony of Buddhism, 
if it be of any weight at all, can only go to convince 
us that the question is at once new and ojDen — new, 
because it has never yet been asked so fully ; and 
ojjen, because in so far as it has been asked, nearly 
half mankind has repudiated the answer that we 
are so desirous of giving it. Mr, Leslie Stephen calls 
Buddhism 'a stupendous fact,' and I quite agree 
with him that it is so ; but taken in connection with 
the present philosophy of Europe, it is hardly a fact 
to strengthen our confidence in the essential dignity 
of man, or the worth of man's life. 

In short, the more we consider the matter, and the 
more various the points from which we do so, the 
more plain will it become to us that the problem the 
present age is confronted by is an altogether unan- 
swered one ; and that the closest seeming parallels to 
be found amongst other times and races, have far 
less really of parallelism in them than of contrast. 
The path of thought, as it were, has taken a sudden 
turn round a mountain ; and our bewildered eyes 
are staring on an undreamed-of prospect. The 
leaders of progress thus far have greeted the sight 
with acclamation, and have confidently declared 
that we are looking on the promised land. But to 
the more thoughtful, and to the less imjoulsive, it is 
plain that a mist hangs over it, and that we have no 



32 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

right to be sure whether it is the promised land or 
no. They see grave reasons for making a closer 
scrutiny, and for asking if, when the mist lifts, what 
we see will be not splendour, but desolation. 

Such, in brief outline, is the question we are to 
deal with. We will now go on to approach it in a 
more detailed way. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PEIZE OF LIFE, 

' The Tcingdom oflieaven is like unto a treasure Tiid in afield.' 

Having thus seen broadly what is meant by that 
claim for life that we are about to analyse, we must 
now examine it more minutely, as made by the posi- 
tive school themselves. 

This will at once make evident one important 
point. The worth in question is closely bound up 
with what we call morality. In this respect our 
deniers of the supernatural claim to be on as firm a 
footing as the believers in it. They will not admit 
that the earnestness of life is lessened for them ; or 
that they have opened any door either to levity or 
to licentiousness. ' It is true indeed that it is allowed 
occasionally that the loss of a faith in God, and of the 
life in a future, may, under certain circumstances, 
be a real loss to us. Others again contend that 
this loss is a gain. Such views as these, however, 
are not much to the purpose. For those even, ac- 
cording to whom life has lost most in this way, do 
not consider the loss a very important, still less a 
fatal one. The good is still to be an aim for us, and 
our devotion to it will be more valuable because it 
3 33 



34 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

will be quite disinterested. Thus Dr. Tyndall in- 
forms us that though he has now rejected the relig- 
ion of his earlier years, yet granting him proper 
health of body, there is ' no spiritual exjjerience, ' 
such as he then knew, ' no resolve of duty, no worJc 
of mercy, no act of self -renouncement, no solemnity 
of tJiougM, no joy in the life and aspects of nature, 
that would not still he ' his. The same is the im- 
plicit teaching of all George Eliot's novels ; whilst 
Professor Huxley tells us that come what may to 
our ' intellectual heliefs and even education,'' ' the 
beauty of holiness and the ugliness of sin ' will re- 
main for those that have eyes to see them, ' qio mere 
metaphors, hut real and intense feelings,'' These 
are but a few examples, but the view of life they il- 
lustrate is so well known that these few will suffice. 
The point on which the modern positivist school is 
most vehement, is that it does not destroy, but 
that on the contrary it intensifies, the distinction 
between right and wrong. 

And now let us consider what, according to all 
positive theories, this supremacy of morality means. 
It means that there is a certain course of active life, 
and a certain course only, by which life can be made 
by everyone a beautiful and a noble thing : and life 
is called earnest, because such a prize is within our 
reach, and solemn because there is a risk that we 
may fail to reach it. Were this not so, right and 



TEE PBIZE OF LIFE. 35 

wrong conld have no general and objective meaning. 
They would be purely personal matters — mere mis- 
leading names, in fact, for the private likes and the 
dislikes of each of us ; and to talk of right, and 
good, and morality, as things that we ought all 
to conform to, and to live by, would be simply 
to talk nonsense. AYhat the very existence of a 
moral system implies is, that whatever may be our 
personal inclinations naturally, there is some com- 
mon pattern to which they should be all ad- 
justed ; the reason being that we shall so all be- 
come partakers in some common happiness, which 
is greater beyond comparison than every other 
kind. 

Here we are presented with two obvious tasks : 
the first, to enquire what this happiness is, what are 
the qualities and attractions generally ascribed to 
it ; the second, to analyse it, as it is thus held up to 
us, and to see if its professed ingredients are suf- 
ficient to make up the result. 

To proceed then, all moral systems must, as we have 
just seen, postulate some end of action, an end to 
which morality is the only road. Further, this end 
is the one thing in life that is really worth attaining ; 
and since we have to do with no life other than this 
one, it must be found amongst the days and years of 
which this short life is the aggregate. On the ade- 
quacy of this universal end depends the whole ques- 



36 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING t 

tion of the positive worth of life, and the essential 
dignity of man. 

That this is at least one way of stating the case has 
been often acknowledged by the positive moralists 
themselves. The following passage, for instance, is 
from the autobiography of J. S. Mill. ' From the 
winter of 1821,' he writes, '"wJien I first read Ben- 
tJiam. . . . I had what might truly he called an ob- 
ject in life, to he a reformer of the world. . . . I en- 
deavoured to picTc up as many flowers as 1 could hy 
the way ; hut as a serious and permanent personal 
satisfaction to rest upon, nny whole reliance was 
placed on this. . . . But the time came when I 
awaTcened from this as from a dream. . . . It occur- 
red to me to p>ut the question directly to myself: 
" Suppose that all your ohjects in life realised ; that 
all the changes in institutions and opinions which 
you were looking forward to, could he completely ef- 
fected in this very instant, would this he a very great 
joy and happiness to you f ' ' And an irrepressihle 
self -consciousness distinctly answered '^ JVo .^ " At 
this my heart sank loithinme : the whole foundation 
on which my life was constructed fell down. . . . 
The end had ceased to charm, and how could there 
ever again he any interest in the means f I seemed 
to have nothing left to live for. . . . The lines in 
Coleridge' s " Dejection^'' exactly descrihemy case : — 



THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 37 

" grief icitJiout a pang, void, dark and drear, 
A dreary, stifled, unimpassioned grief, 
WhicJi finds no natural outlet nor relief 
In word, or sigh, or tear. 

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, 
And life without an object cannot live." ' 

And the foregoing confession is made more significant 
by the author' s subsequent comment on it. ' Though 
my dejection^'' he says^ ' honestly loolced at, could 
not he called other than egotistical, produced hy the 
ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet 
the destiny of mankind was ever in my thoughts, 
and could not he separated from my own. I felt that 
the flaw in my life must he a flaw in life itself ; and 
that the question loas whether, if the reformers of 
society a.nd government could succeed in their ohjects, 
and every person in the community were free, and in 
a state of physical comfort, the pleasures of life 
heing no longer kept up hy struggle and privation, 
would cease to he pleasures. And I felt that unless 
I could see some hetter hope than this for human 
happiness in general, my dejection must continue.'' 
It is true that in Mill' s case the dejection did not 
continue ; and that in certain ways at which it is not 
yet time to touch, he succeeded, to his own satisfac- 
tion, in finding the end he was thus asking for. I 
only quote him to show how necessary he considered 



38 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

such an end to be. He acknowledged tlie fact, not 
only theoretically, or with his lips, but by months of 
misery, by intermittent thoughts of suicide, and by 
years of recurring melancholy. Some ultimate end 
of action, some kind of satisfying happiness — this, 
and this alone, he felt, could gi^e any meaning to 
work, or make possible any kind of virtue. And a 
yet later authority has told us precisely the same 
thing. He has told us that the one great question 
that education is of value for answering, is this very 
question that was so earnestly asked by Mill. ' The 
ultimate end of education,'' says Professor Huxley, 
' is to promote morality and refinement, hy teaching 
men to discipline tJionselms, and hy leading them to 
see that the highest, as it is the only content, is to 
he attained not hy groxelling in the rank and steam- 
ing valleys of sense, hut hy continually strimng to- 
wards those high peaks, cohere, resting in eternal 
calm, reason discerns the undefined hut hright ideal 
of the highest good — "a cloud hy day, a pillar of 
fire hy night.'''' ' And these words are an excellent 
specimen of the general moral exhortations of the 
new school. 

N'ow all this is very well as far as it goes ; and were 
there not one thing lacking, it would be Just the an- 
swer that we are at present so anxious to elicit. But 
the one thing lacking, is enough to make it valueless. 
It may mean a great deal ; but there is no possibility 



THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 39 

of saying exactly what it means. Before we can be- 
gin to strive towards the 'highest good,' we must 
know something of what this ' highest good ' is. We 
must make this ' higher ideal ' stand and unfold it- 
self. If it cannot be made to do this, if it vanishes 
into mist as we near it, and takes a different shape to 
each of us as we recede from it ; still more, if only 
some can see it, and to others it is quite invisible — 
then we must simply set it down as an illusion, and 
waste no more time in pursuit of it. But that it is 
not an illusion is the great positivist claim for it. 
Heaven and the love of God, we are told, were illu- 
sions. This 'highest good' we are offered, stands 
out in clear contradistinction to these. It is an ac- 
tual attainable thing, a thing for flesh and blood 
creatures ; it is to be won and enjoyed by them in 
their common daily life. It is, as its prophets dis- 
tinctly and unanimously tell us, some form of happi- 
ness that results in this life to us, from certain con- 
duct ; it is a thing essentially for the present ; and 
' it is obmously,^ says Professor Huxley, ' in no way 
affected hy alibremation or prolongation of our con- 
scious life.'' 

This being the case, it is clearly not unreasonable 
to demand some explicit account of it ; or if no sound 
account of it be extant, to enquire diligently what 
sort of account of it is possible. And let it be re- 
membered that to make this demand is in no way to 



40 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

violate the great rule of Aristotle, and to demand a 
greater accuracy than the nature of the subject will 
admit of. The 'highest good,' it is quite possible, 
may be a vague thing ; not caj)able, like a iigure in 
Euclid, of being defined exactly. But many vague 
things can be described exactly enough for all prac- 
tical purposes. They can be described so that we at 
once know what is meant, and so that we can at once 
find and recognise them. Feelings, characters, and 
j)ersonal appearance are things of this sort ; so too is 
the taste of food, the style of furniture, or the gen- 
eral tone and tenour of our life, under various cir- 
cumstances. And the 'good' we are now consider- 
ing can surely be not less describable than these. 
When therefore our exact thinkers speak to us about 
the highest happiness, we want to know what mean- 
ing they attach to the words. Has Professor Huxley, 
for instance, ever enjoyed it himself, or does he ever 
hope to do so \ If so, when, where, and how ? What 
must be done to get it, and what must be left undone ? 
And when it is got, what will it be like ? Is it some- 
thing brief, rapturous, and intermittent, as the lan- 
guage often used about it might seem to suggest to 
one ? Is it known only in brief moments of Neoplatonic 
ecstasy, to which all the acts of life should be step- 
ping stones ? It certainly cannot be that. Our exact 
thinkers are essentially no mystics, and the highest 
hapx^iness must be something far more solid than tran- 



THE PBIZE OF LIFE. 41 

scendental ecstasies. Surely, therefore, if it exists 
at all we must be able somewhere to lay our hands 
upon it. It is a pillar of fire by night ; surely then it 
will be visible. It is to be lifted up, and is to draw all 
men unto it. It is nothing if not this : and we shall 
see more clearly if we consider the matter further. 

This chief good, or this highest happiness, being 
the end of moral action, one point about it is at once 
evident. Its value is of course recognised by those 
who practise morality, or who enunciate moral sys- 
tems. Virtuous men are virtuous because the end 
gained by vu-tue is an end that they desire to gain. 
But this is not enough ; it is not enough that to men 
who are already seeking the good the good should 
appear in all its full attractiveness. It must be capa- 
ble of being made attractive for those who do not 
know it, and who have never sought it, but who 
have, on the contrary, always turned away from 
everything that is supposed to lead to it. It must 
be able, in other words, not only to satisfy the virtu- 
ous of the wisdom of their virtue, it must be able to 
convince the vicious of the. folly of their vice. Vice 
is only bad in the eye of the positive moralist be- 
cause of the precious something that we are at the 
present moment losing by it. He can only convince 
us of our error by giving us some picture of our loss. 
And he must be able to do this, if his system is worth 
anything ; and in promulgating his system he pro- 



42 IS LIFE WORTH LIVINO? 

f esses tliat lie can do it. The physician's work is 
to heal the sick ; his skill must not end in explain- 
ing his own health. It is clear that if a morality is 
incapable of being preached, it is useless to say that 
it is worthy of being practised. The statement will 
be meaningless, except to those for whom it is super- 
fluous. It is therefore essential to the moral end 
that in some way or other it be generally presenta- 
ble, so that its excellence shall appeal to some com- 
mon sense in man. And again, be it observed, that 
we are demanding no mathematical accuracy. We 
demand only that the presentation shall be accurate 
enough to let us recognise its corresponding fact in 
life. 

!N'ow what is a code of morals, and Avhy has the 
world any need of one % A code of morals is a num- 
ber of restraining orders ; it rigorously bids us walk 
in certain paths. But why ? What is the use of 
bidding us \ Because there are a number of other 
paths that we are naturally inclined to walk in. The 
right path is right because it leads to the highest 
kind of happiness ; the wrong paths are wi-ong be- 
cause they lead to lower kinds of happiness. But 
when men choose vice instead of virtue, what is 
happening ? They are considering the lower or the 
lesser happiness better than the greater or the higher. 
It is this mistake that is the essence and cause of 
immorality ; it is this mistake that mankind is ever 



THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 43 

inclined to make, and it is only because of tliis incli- 
nation tliat any moral system is of any general 
value. 

Were we all naturally inclined to morality, the 
analysis of it, it is true, miglit have great sjDecula- 
tive interest ; but a moral system would not be 
needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The 
law, as we all know, has arisen because of transgres- 
sions, and the moralist has to meddle with human 
nature mainly because it is inconstant and corrupted. 
It is a wild horse that has not so much to be broken, 
once for all, as to be driven and reined in j)erp6tu- 
ally. And the art of the moi^alist is, by opening the 
mind's eye to the true end of life, to make us sharply 
conscious of what we lose by losing it. And the 
men to whom we shall chiefly want to present this 
end are not men, let us remember, who desire to see 
it, or who will seek for it of their own accord, but 
men who are turned away from it, and on whose 
sight it must be thrust. It is not the righteous but 
the sinners that have to be called to repentance. And 
not this only : not only must the end in question be 
thus presentable, but when presented it must be able to 
stand the inveterate criticism of those who fear being 
allured by it, who are content as they are, and have 
no wish to be made discontented. These men will 
submit it to every test by which they may hope to 
prove that its attractions are delusive. They will 



44 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING 1 

test it with reason, as we test a metal by an acid. 
They will ask what it is based upon, and of what it 
is compounded. They will submit it to an analysis 
as merciless as that by which their advisers have 
dissolved theism. 

Here then is a fact that all positive morality pre- 
supposes. It pre-supposes that life by its very na- 
ture contains the possibility in it of some one kind of 
happiness, which is open to all men, and which is 
better than all others. It is sufficiently presentable 
even to those who have not experienced it ; and its 
excellence is not vaguely apparent only, but can be 
exactly proved from obvious and acknowledged 
facts. Further, this happiness must be removed 
from its alternatives by some very great interval. 
The proudest, the serenest, the most successful life 
of vice, must be miserable when compared with the 
most painful life of virtue, and miserable in a very 
high degree ; for morality is momentous exactly in 
proportion to the interval between the things to be 
gained and escaped by it. And unless this interval be 
a very profound one, the language at present current 
as to the importance of virtue, the dignity of life, and 
the earnestness of the moral struggle, will be alto- 
gether overstrained and ludicrous. 

N'ow is such a happiness a reality or is it a myth ? 
That is, the great question. Can human life, cut off 
utterly from every hope beyond itself — can human 



THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 45 

life supply it ? If it cannot, then evidently there 
can be no morality without religion. But perhaps 
it can. Perhaps life has greater capacities than we 
have hitherto given it credit for. Perhaps this hap- 
piness may be really close at hand for each of us, 
and we have only overlooked it hitherto because it 
was too directly before our eyes. At all events, 
wherever it is let it be pointed out to us. It is use- 
less, as we have seen, if not generally presentable. 
To those who most need it, it is useless until present- 
ed. Indeed, until it is presented we are but acting 
on the maxim of its advocates by refusing to believe 
in its existence, 'iVb simplicity ofonind,'' says Pro- 
fessor Clifford, ' no obscurity of station, can escape 
the universal duty of questioning all that we Re- 
lieve.'' 

The question, then, that we want answered has by 
this time, I think, been stated with sufficient clear- 
ness, and its importance and its legitimacy been 
placed beyond a doubt. I shall now go on to ex- 
plain in detail how completely unsatisfactory are the 
answers that are at present given it ; how it is evaded 
by some and begged by others ; and how those that 
are most plausible are really made worthless, by a 
subtle but profound defect. 

These answers divide themselves into two classes, 
which, though invariably confused by those that 
give them, are in reality quite distinct and separa- 



46 ' IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

Tble. Professor Huxley, one of the most vigorous of 
our positive thinkers, shall help us to understand 
these. He is going to tell us, let us remember, about 
the '■Jiigliest good'' — the happiness, in other words, 
that we have just been discussing — the secret of our 
life's worth, and the test of all our conduct. This 
happiness he divides into two kinds. ^ He says that 
there are two things that we may mean when we speak 
about it. We may mean the happiness of a society 
of men, or we may mean the hax3piness of the mem- 
bers of that society. And when we speak of moral- 
ity, we may mean two things also ; and these two 
things must be kept distinct. We may mean what 
Professor Huxley calls ' social morality,'' and of this 
the test and object is the happiness of societies ; 
or we may mean what he calls '' x>ersonal inorallty,^ 
and of this the test and object is the happiness of 
individuals. And the answers which our positive 
moralists make to us divide themselves into two 
classes, according to the sort of happiness they re- 
fer to. 

It is before all things important that this division 
be understood, and be kept quite clear in our minds, 
if we would see honestly what our positive modern 
systems amount to. For what makes them at pres- 
ent so very hard to deal with, is the fact that their 
exponents are perpetually perplexing themselves 

' Vide Nineteenth Century, No. 3, pp. 536, 537. 



THE PRIZE OF LIFE. 47 

between these two classes of answers, first giving 
one, and tlien the other, and imagining that, by a 
kind of confusion of substance, they can both afford 
solutions of the same questions. Thus they con- 
tinually speak of life as though its crowning achieve- 
ment were some kind of personal happiness ; and 
then being asked to explain the nature and basis of 
this, they at once shift their ground, and talk to us 
of the laws and conditions of social happiness. Pro- 
fessor Huxley will again supply us with a very ex- 
cellent example. He starts with the thesis that both 
sorts of morality are strong enough to hold their 
own, without supernatural aid ; and when we look 
to see on what ground he holds they are, we find it 
to consist in the following explanation that one is. 
' Gimn,'' he says, ' a society of Jiuman 'beings under 
certain circumstances^ and the question whether a 
particular action on the part of one of its members 
will tend to increase the general happiness or not^ is 
a question of natural Jcnowledge, and as such is a 
perfectly legitimate subject of scientific inquiry . . . 
If it can be shown by obsernation or experiment, 
that theft, murder, and adultery do not tend to di- 
minish the happiness of society, then, in the absence 
of any but natural knowledge, they are not social 
immoralities.'' 

Now, in the above passage we have at least one 
thing. We have a short epitome of one of those 



48 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

classes of answers that our positive moralists are 
offering us. It is with this class that I shall deal in 
the following chapter ; and point out as briefly as 
may be its complete irrelevance. After that, I shall 
go on to the other. 



CHAPTER III. 

SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MOEALITY. 

Society, says Professor Clifford, is the highest of 
all organisms ; ^ and its organic nature, he tells us, is 
one of those great facts which our own generation 
has been the first to state rationally. It is our un- 
derstanding of this that enables us to supply morals 
with a positive basis.. It is, he proceeds, because 
society is organic, ' tliat actions which, as in- 
dividual, are insignificant, are massed together 
into .... important moDements. Co-operation or 
band- work is the life of it.'' And Ht is the practice 
of hand-worJc,'' he adds, that, unknown till lately 
though its nature was to us, has so moulded man as 
' to create in him two specially human faculties, the 
conscience and the intellect ; ' of which the former, 
we are told, gives us the desire for the good, and the 
latter instructs us how to attain this desire by action. 
So too Professor Huxley, once more to recur to him, 
says that that state of man would be ' a true civitas 
Dei, in which each mail! s moral faculty shall he 
such as leads him to control all those desires which 
run counter to the good of manJcind,^ And J. S. 

' Vide NineteentJi Century, October, 1877. 
4 49 



50 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

Mill, whose doubts as to tlie value of life we have 
already dwelt upon, professed to have at last satis- 
fied himself by a precisely similar answer. He had 
never '"wavered in the conmction,'' he tells us, even 
all through his perplexity, that, if life had any value 
at all, '■liapjyiness'' was its one ''end,'' and the Hest 
of its rule of conduct;'' but he now thought that 
this end was to be attained by not making it the 
direct end, but ' hy fixing the mind on some object 
other than one's own happiness ; onthehappiness of 
others— on the improvement of mankind.'' The same 
thing is being told us on all sides, and in countless 
ways. The common name for this theory is Utili- 
tarianism ; and its great boast, and its special pro- 
fessed strength, is that it gives morals a positive 
basis in the acknowledged science of sociology. 
Whether sociology can really supply such a basis is 
what we now have to enquire. There are many 
practical rules for which it no doubt can do so ; but 
will these rules correspond with what we mean by 
morals ? 

Now the province of the sociologist, within certain 
limits, is clear enough. His study is to the social 
body what the study of the physician is to the indi- 
vidual body. It is the study of human action as 
productive, or non-iDroductive, of some certain gen- 
eral good. But here comes the point at issue — What 
is this general good, and what is included by it? 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 51 

The positive school contend that it is general happi- 
ness ; and there, they say, is the answer to the great 
question— What is the test of conduct, and the true 
end of life 'I But though, as we shall see in another 
moment, there is some plausibility in this, there is 
really nothing in it of the special answer we want. 
Our question is. What is the true happiness ? And 
what is the answer thus far? — That the true happi- 
ness is general happiness ; that it is the happiness of 
men in societies ; that it is happiness equally dis- 
tributed. But this avails us nothing. The coveted 
happiness is still a locked casket. We know nothing 
as yet of its contents. A happy society neither does 
nor can mean anything but a number of happy indi- 
viduals, so organised that their individual happiness 
is secured to them. But w^hat do the individuals 
want ? Before we can try to secure it for them, we 
must know that. Granted that we know what will 
make the individuals happy, then we shall know 
what will make society happy. And then social 
morality will be, as Professor Huxley says, a per- 
fectly legitimate subject of scientific enquiry — then, 
but not till then. But this is what the positive 
school are perpetually losing sight of ; and the rea- 
son of the confusion is not far to seek. 

Within certain limits, it is quite true, the general 
good is a sufficiently obvious matter, and beyond the 
reach of any rational dispute. There are, therefore, 



53 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

certain rules with regard to conduct that we can 
arrive at and Justify by strictly scientific methods. 
We can demonstrate that there are certain actions 
which we must never tolerate, and which we must 
join together, as best we may, to suppress. Actions, 
for instance, that would tend to generate pestilence, 
or to destroy our good faith in our fellows, or to 
render our lives and property insecure, are actions 
the badness of which can be scientifically verified. 

But the general good by which these actions are 
tested is something quite distinct from happiness, 
though it undoubtedly has a close connection with 
it. It is no kind of happiness, high or low, in parti- 
cular ; it is simply those negative conditions required 
equally by every kind. If we are to be happy in 
any way, no matter what, we must of course have 
our lives, and, next to our lives, our health and our 
possessions secured to us. But to secure us these 
does not secure us happiness. It simply leaves us 
free to secure it, if we can, for ourselves. Once let 
us have some common agreement as to what this 
happiness is, we may then be able to formulate other 
rules for attaining it. But in the absence of any 
such agreement, the only possible aim of social mo- 
rality, the only possible meaning of the general good, 
is not any kind or any kinds of happiness, but the 
security of those conditions without which all hap- 
piness would be impossible. 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION^ OF MORALITY. 53 

Suppose the liuman race were a set of canaries 
in a cage, and that we were in grave doubt as to 
what seed to give them — hemp-seed, rape-seed, or 
canary-seed, or all three mixed in certain pro- 
portions. That wo aid exactly represent the state 
of our case thus far. There is the question that 
we want the positive school to answer. It is surely 
evident that, in this perplexity, it is beside the 
point to tell us that the birds must not peck each 
other's eyes out, and that they must all have 
access to the trough that we are ignorant how to 
fiU. 

The fault then, so continually committed by the 
positive school, is this. They confuse the negative 
conditions of happiness with the positive materials 
of it. Professor Huxley, in a passage I have already 
quoted, is caught, so to speak, in the very act of 
committing it. ' Theft, murder, and adultery, '^ all 
these three, it will be remembered, he classes to- 
gether, and seems to think that they stand upon the 
same footing. But from what has just been pointed 
out, it is plain that they do not do so. We condemn 
theft and murder for one reason. We condemn adul- 
tery for quite another. We condemn the former 
because they are incompatible with any form of hap- 
piness. We condemn the latter because it is the 
supposed destruction of one particular form ; or the 
substitution, rather, of a form supposed to be less 



54 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

complete, for another form supposed to be more 
complete. If the ' highest good,^ if the best kind of 
happiness, be the end we are in search of, the truths 
of sociology will help us but a very short way to- 
wards it. By the practice of ' hand-wo7'lc ' alone we 
shall never learn to construct a ' true Civitas Dei.' 
Band-work with the same perfection may be prac- 
tised for opposite ends. Send an army in a just war 
or an unjust one, in either case it will need the same 
discipline. There must be order amongst thieves, as 
well as amongst honest men. There can be an 
orderly brothel as well as an orderly nunnery, and 
all order rests on co-operation. We presume co- 
operation. We require an end for which to co-op- 
erate. 

I have already compared the science of sociology 
to that of medicine ; and the comparison will again 
be a very instructive one. The aim of both sciences 
is to produce health ; and the relation of health to 
happiness is in both cases the same. It is an im- 
portant condition of the full enjoyment of anything ; 
but it will by no means of itself give or guide us to 
the best thing. A man may be in excellent health, 
and yet, if he be prudent, be leading a degrading 
life. So, too, may a society. The Cities of the Plain 
may, for all we know to the contrary, have been in 
excellent social health ; indeed, there is every reason 
to believe they were. They were, apparently, to a 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 55 

high degree strong and prosxDerous ; and the sort of 
happiness that their citizens set most store by was 
only too generally attainable. There were not ten 
men to be found in them by whom the Jiighest good 
had not been realised. 

There are, however, two suppositions, on which 
the general good, or the health of the social organ- 
ism, can be given a more definite meaning, and 
made in some sense an adequate test of conduct. 
And one or other of these suppositions is appar- 
ently always lurking in the positivist mind. But 
though, when unexpressed, and only barely assent- 
ed to, they may seem to be true, their entire false- 
hood will appear the moment they are distinctly 
stated. 

One of these suppositions is, that for human hap- 
piness health is alone requisite — health in the social 
organism including sufficient wealth and freedom ; 
and that man's life, whenever it is not interfered 
with, will be moral, dignified, and delightful natur- 
ally, no matter how he lives it. But this supposi- 
tion, from a moralist, is of course nonsense. For, 
were it true, as we have Just seen, Sodom might have 
been as moral as the tents of Abraham ; and in a 
perfect state there would be a fitting place for both. 
The social organism indeed, in its highest state of 
perfection, would manifest the richest variety in the 
development of such various parts. It might con- 



56 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

sist of a number of motley communes ^ of monoga- 
mists and of free4overs, of ascetics and sybarites, of 
saints and Ttaidepaffral—^QdiQh of them being stones 
in this true Glmtas Dei, this holy city of God. Of 
course it may be contended that this state of things 
would be desirable ; that, however, is quite a differ- 
ent question. But whatever else it was, it would 
certainly not be moral, in any sense in which the 
word has yet been used. 

The second supposition I spoke of, though less 
openly absurd than this one, is really quite as false. 
It consists of a vague idea that, for some reason or 
other, happiness can never be distributed in an 
equal measure to all, unless it be not only equal in 
degree but also the same in kind ; and that the one 
kind that can be thus distributed is a kind that is in 
harmony with our conceptions of moral excellence. 
IsTow this is indeed so far true, that there are doubt- 
less certain kinds of happiness which, if enjoyed at 
all, can be enjoyed by the few alone ; and that the 

' * As Mr. Spencer points otit, society does not resemble those organ- 
isms which are so highly centralised that the unity of the whole is the 
important thing, and every part must die if separated from the rest ; 
but rather those that will bear separation and reunion ; because, although 
there is a certain union and organisation of the parts in regard to one 
another, yet the far more important fact is the life of the parts separ- 
ately. The true health of society depends upon the communes, the vil- 
lages and townships, infinitely more than on the form and pageantry of 
an imperial government, If in them there is band-work, union for a 
common effort, converse in the working out of a common thought, there 
the Bepublic is.' — Professor ClifEord, Nineteenth Century, October, 1877. 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 57 

conditions under whicli alone the few can enjoy 
tliem disturb the conditions of all happiness for the 
many. The general good, therefore, gives us at once 
a test by which such kinds of happiness can be con- 
demned. But to eliminate these will by no means 
leave us a residue of virtue ; for these so far from 
being co-extensive with moral evil, do in reality lie 
only on the borders of it ; and the condemnation 
attached to them is a legal rather than a moral one. 
It is based, that is, not so much on the kind of hap- 
piness itself as on the circumstances under which we 
are at present obliged to seek it. Thus the practice 
of seduction may be said to be condemned suffi- 
ciently by the misery brought by it to its victims, 
and its victims' families. But suppose the victims 
are willing, and the families complacent, this ground 
of condemnation goes ; though in the eye of the 
moralist, matters in this last will be far worse than 
in the former. It is therefore quite a mistake to say 
that the kind of happiness which it is the end of life 
to realise is defined or narrowed down appreciably 
by the fact that it is a general end. Vice can be 
enjoyed in common, just as well as virtue ; nor if 
wisely regulated will it exhaust the tastes that it ap- 
peals to. Regulated with equal skill, and with equal 
far-sightedness, it will take its place side by side with 
virtue ; nor will sociology or social morality give 
us any reason for preferring the one to the other. 



58 J'S LIFE WOBTII LIVING? 

We may observe accordingly, that if happiness of 
some certain kind be the moral test, what Professor 
Huxley calls ' social morality'' — the rule that is, for 
producing the negative conditions of hapxDiness, it is 
not in itself morality at all. It may indeed become 
so, when the consciousness that we are conforming 
to it becomes one of the factors of our own personal 
happiness. It then suffers a kind of apotheosis. It 
is taken up into ourselves, and becomes part and par- 
cel of our own personal morality. But it then be- 
comes quite a different matter, as we shall see very 
shortly ; and even then it supplies us with but a very 
small part of the answer. 

Thus far what has been made plain is this. Gen- 
eral, or social happiness, unless explained farther, is 
simply for moral purj)oses an unmeaning phrase. It 
evades the whole question we are asking ; for happi- 
ness is no more differentiated by saying that it is gen- 
eral, than food is by saying that everyone at a table 
is eating it ; or than a language is by saying that 
every one in a room is talking it. The social happi- 
ness of all of us means nothing but the personal hap- 
piness of each of us ; and if social happiness have 
any single meaning — in other words, if it be a test of 
morals — it must postulate a personal happiness of 
some hitherto unexplained kind. Else sociology will 
be subsidiary to nothing but individual license ; gen- 
eral law will be but the protection of individual law- 



SOCIOLOGY A8 THE FOUNDATION OF MOBALITY. 59 

lessness ; and the completest social morality but the 
condition of the completest personal nn-morality. 
The social organism we may compare to a yew-tree. 
Science will explain to us how it has grown up from 
the ground, and how all its twigs must have fitting 
room to expand in. It will not show us how to clip 
the yew-tree into a j)eacock. Morality, it is true, 
must rest ultimately on the proved facts of sociology ; 
and this is not only true but evident. But it rests 
upon them as a statue rests upon its pedestal, and the 
same pedestal will support an Athene or a Priapus. 

The matter, however, is not yet altogether disposed 
of. The tyx)e of personal happiness that social mo- 
rality postulates, as a whole, we have still to seek for. 
But a part of it, as I just pointed out, will, beyond 
doubt, be a willing obedience by each to the rules 
that make it in its entirety within the reach of all. 
About this obedience, however, there is a certain thing 
to remember : it must be willing, not enforced. The 
laws will of course do all they can to enforce it ; but 
not only can they never do this completely, but even 
if they could, they would not produce morality. 
Conduct which, if willing, we should call highly 
moral, we shall, if enforced only, call nothing more 
than legal. We do not call a wild bear tame because 
it is so w^ell caged that there is no fear of its attack- 
ing us ; nor do we call a man good because, though 
his desires are evil, we have made him afraid to grat- 



60 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

ify them. Further, it is not enough that the obedi- 
ence in question be willing in the sense that it does 
not give us pain. If it is to be a moral quality, 
it must also give us positive pleasure. Indeed, it 
must not so much be obedience to the law as an im- 
passioned co-operation with it, 

Now this, if producible, even though no further 
moral aim was connected with it, would undoubted- 
ly be of itself a moral element. Suppose two pigs, 
for instance, had only a single wallowing-place, and 
each would like naturally to wallow in it for ever. 
If each pig in turn were to rejoice to make room for 
his brother, and were consciously to regulate his de- 
light in becoming filthy himself by an equal delight 
in seeing his brother becoming filthy also, w^e should 
doubtless here be in the presence of a certain moral 
element. And though this, in a human society, might 
not carry us so far as we require to be carried, it would, 
without doubt, if producible, carry us a certain way. 
The question is, Is this moral element, this impas- 
sioned and unselfish co-operation with the social law, 
producible, in the absence of any farther end to which 
the social law is to be subordinate? The positive 
school apparently think it is ; and this oiDinion has 
a seeming foundation in fact. We will therefore 
carefully examine what this foundation is, and see 
how far it is really able to support the w^eight that 
is laid upon it. 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 61 

That fact, in itself a quite undoubted one, is the 
possession by man of a certain special and important 
feeling, which, viewed from its passive side, we call 
sympathy, and from its active side, benevolence. It 
exists in various degrees in different people, but to 
some degree or other it probably exists in all. Most 
people, for instance, if they hear an amusing story, 
at once itch to tell it to an appreciative friend ; for 
they find that the amusement, if shared, is doubled. 
Two epicures together, for the same reason, will en- 
joy a dinner better than if they each dined singly. 
In such cases the enjoyment of another plays the 
part of a reflector, which throws one's own enjoy- 
ment back on one. Nor is this all. It is not only 
true that we often desire others to be pleased with 
us ; w^e often desire others to be pleased instead of 
us. For instance, if there be but one easy chair in a 
room, one man will often give it up to another, and 
prefer himself to stand, or perhaps sit on the table. 
To contemplate discomfort is often more annoying 
than to suffer it. 

This is the fact in human nature on which the pos- 
itive school rely for their practical motive power. It 
is this sympathy and benevolence that is the secret 
of the social union ; and it is by these that the rules 
of social morality are to be absorbed and attracted 
into ourselves, and made the directors of all our other 
impulses. 



62 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

The feelings, however, that are thus relied on will 
be found, on consideration, to be altogether inade- 
quate. They are undoubted facts, it is true, and are 
ours by the very constitution of our nature ; but they 
do not possess the importance that is assigned to 
them, and their limits are soon reached. They are 
unequal in their distribution ; they are partial and 
capricious in their action ; and they are disturbed 
and counterbalanced by the opposite impulse of self- 
ishness, which is just as much a part of our nature, 
and which is just as generally distributed. It must 
be a very one-sided view of the case that will lead us 
to deny this ; and by such eclectic methods of obser- 
vation we can support any theory we please. Thus 
there are many stories of unselfish heroism displayed 
by rough men on occasions such as shijDwrecks, and 
displayed quite spontaneously. And did we confine 
our attention to this single set of examples, we might 
naturally conclude that we had here the real nature 
of man bursting forth in all its intense entu^ety — a 
constant but suppressed force, which we shall learn 
by-and-by to utilise generally. But if we extend our 
observations a little farther, we shall find another set 
of examples, in which selfishness is just as predomi- 
nant as unselfishness was in the first set. The sailor, 
for instance, who might struggle to save a woman on 
a sinking ship, will trample her to death to escape 
from a burning theatre. And if we will but honestly 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 63 

estimate the composite nature of man, we sliall find 
that the sailor, in this latter case, embodies a ten- 
dency far commoner, and far more to be counted on, 
than he does in the former. ISTo fair student of life 
or history will, I think, be able to deny this. The 
lives of the world' s greatest men, be they Goethes or 
^Napoleons, will be the first to show us that it is so. 
Whilst the world's best men, who have been most 
successful in conquering their selfish nature, will be 
the first to bear witness to the persistent strength 
of it. 

But even giving these unpromising facts the least 
weight possible, the case will j3ractically be not 
much mended. The unselfish imj)ulses, let them be 
diffused never so widely, will be found, as a general 
rule, to be very limited in power ; and to be intense 
only for short periods, and under exceptional cir- 
cumstances. They are intense only — in the absence 
of any further motive — when the thing to be won for 
another becomes invested for the moment with an 
abnormal value, and the thing to be lost by oneself 
becomes abnormally depreciated ; when all interme- 
diate possibilities are suddenly swept away from us, 
and the only surviving alternatives are shame and 
heroism. But this never happens, except in the case 
of great catastrophes, of such, for instance, as a ship- 
wreck ; and thus the only conditions under which an 
impassioned unselfishness can be counted on, are 



64 ^S LIFE WOBTE LIVING? 

amongst tlie first conditions that we trust to progress 
to eliminate. The common state of life, then, when 
the feelings are in this normal state of tension, is all 
that in this connection we can really be concerned in 
dealing with. And there, unselfishness, though as 
sure a fact as selfishness, is, spontaneously and apart 
from a further motive, essentially unequal to the 
work it is asked to do. Thus, though as I observed 
Just now, a man may often prefer to sit on a table 
and give up the arm-chair to a friend, there are other 
times when he will be very loth to do so. He will 
do so when the pleasure of looking at comfort is 
greater than the pleasure of feeling it. And in cer- 
tain states of mind and body this is very often the 
case. But let him be sleepy and really in need of 
rest, the selfish impulse will at once eclipse the un- 
selfish, and, unless under the action of some alien 
motive, he will keep the arm-chair for himself. So, 
too, in the case of the two epicures, if there be sufii- 
cient of the best dainties for both, each will feel that 
it is so much the better. But whenever the dainties 
in question cannot be divided, it will be the tendency 
of each to take them furtively for himself. 

And when we come to the conditions of happiness 
the matter will be just the same. If without incom- 
moding ourselves we can, as Professor Huxley says, 
repress ^all those desires loMcTi run counter to tlie 
good of manlcind,'^ we shall no doubt all willingly do 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 65 

SO ; only in that case little more need be said. The 
' Cimtas Dei ' we are promised may be left to take 
care of itself, and it will doubtless very soon begin 
^to rise liJce an exhalation.'' But if this self -repres- 
sion be a matter of great difficulty, and one requir- 
ing a constant struggle on our part, it will be need- 
ful for us to intensely realise, when we abstain from 
any action, that the hapjDiness it would take from 
others will be far greater than the happiness it 
would give to ourselves. Suppose, for instance, a 
man were in love with his friend' s wife, and had en- 
gaged on a certain night to take her to the theatre. 
He would instantly give the engagement up could he 
know that the people in the gallery would be burnt 
to death if he did not. He would certainly not give 
it up because by the sight of his proceedings the 
moral tone of the stalls might be infinitesimally 
lowered ; still less would he do so because another 
wife's husband might be made infinitely jealous. 
Whenever we give up any source of personal happi- 
ness for the sake of the happiness of the community 
at large, the two kinds of happiness have to be 
weighed together in a balance. But the latter, ex- 
cept in very few cases, is at a great disadvantage : 
only a part of it, so to speak, can be got into the 
scale. What adds to my sense of pleasure in the 
proportion of a million pounds may be only taxing 
society in the proportion of half a farthing a head. 
5 



QQ T8 LIFE WOBTE LIVING? 

Unselfishness with regard to society is thus essen- 
tially a different thing from unselfishness with re- 
gard to an individual. In the latter case the things 
to be weighed together are commensurate : not so is 
the former. In the latter case, as we have seen, a^a 
impassioned self-devotion may be at times produced 
by the sudden presentation to a man of two extreme 
alternatives ; but in the former case such alternatives 
are not presentable. I may know that a certain line 
of conduct will on the one hand give me great pleas- 
ure, and that on the other hand, if it were practised 
by everyone, it would produce much general mis- 
chief ; but I shall know that my practising it, will, 
as a fact, be hardly felt at aU. by the community, or 
at all events only in a very small degree. And there- 
fore my choice is not that of the sailor' s in the ship- 
wreck. It does not lie between saving my life at the 
expense of a woman's, or saving a woman's life at 
the expense of mine. It lies rather, as it were, be- 
tween letting her lose her ear-ring and breaking my 
own arm. 

It will appear, therefore, that the general condi- 
tions of an entirely undefined happiness form an 
ideal utterly unfitted to counterbalance individual 
temptation or to give even willingness, let alone 
ardour, to the self-denials that are required of us. 
In the first place the conditions are so vague that 
even in the extremest cases the individual will find 



SOCIOLOGY A8 THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 67 

it difficult to realise that lie is appreciably disturb- 
ing them. And in the second place, until he knows 
that the happiness in question is something of ex- 
treme value he will be unable to feel much ardour in 
helping to make it possible. If we knew that the 
social organism in its state of completest health had 
no higher pleasure than sleep and eating, the cause 
of its completest health would hardly excite enthu- 
siasm. And even if we did not rebel against any 
sacrifices for so poor a result as this, we should at 
the best be resigned rather than blest in making 
them. The nearest approach to a moral end that the 
science of sociology will of itself supply to us is an 
end that, in all probability, men will not follow at all, 
or that will produce in them, if they do, no happier 
state than a i^assionless and passive acquiescence. If 
we want anything more than this we must deal with 
happiness itself, not with the negative conditions of 
it. We must discern the highest good that is within 
the reach of each of us, and this may perhaps sup- 
ply us with a motive for endeavouring to secure the 
same blessing for all. But the matter depends en- 
tirely on what this highest good is — on the end to 
which, given the social health, the social health will 
be directed. 

The real answer to this question can be given, as I 
have said before, in terms of the individual only. 
Social happiness is a mere set of ciphers till the unit 



68 IS LIFE WOBTH LIVING! 

of personal liap]Diness is placed before it. A man's 
happiness may of course depend on other beings, but 
still it is none the less contained in himself. If our 
greatest delight were to see each other dance the can- 
can^ then it might be morality for us all to dance. 
None the less would this be a happy world, not be- 
cause we were all dancing, but because we each en- 
joyed the sight of such a spectacle. Many young 
officers take intense pride in their regiments, and the 
character of such regiments may in a certain sense 
be called a corporate thing. But it depends entirely 
on the personal character of their members, and all 
that the phrase really indicates is that a set of men 
take pleasure in similar things. Thus it is the boast 
of one young officer that the members of his regiment 
all spend too much, of another that they all drink 
too much, of another that they are distinguished for 
their high rank, and of another that they are distin- 
guished for the lowness of their sensuality. What 
differentiates one regiment from another is first and 
before all things some personal source of happiness 
common to all its members. 

And as it is with the character of a regiment, so 
too is it with the character of life in general. AYhen 
we say that Humanity may become a glorious thing 
as a whole, we must mean that each man may attain 
some positive glory as an individual. What shall I 
get % and I % and I % and I % What do you offer me % 



SOCIOLOGY A8 THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 69 

and me ? and me ? This is the first question that the 
common sense of mankind asks. ' You must promise 
sometTiing to each of us,'' it says, 'or 'very certainly 
you will he able to promise nothing to all of us.'' 
There is no real escape in saying that we must all 
work for one another, and that our happiness is to be 
found in that. The question merely confronts us 
with two other facets of itself. What sort of happi- 
ness shall I secure for others 1 and what sort of hap- 
piness will others secure for me ? What will it be 
like ? Will it be worth having ? In the positivist 
Utopia, we are told, each man' s happiness is bound 
up in the happiness of all the rest, and is thus infi- 
nitely intensified. All mankind are made a mighty 
whole, by the fusing power of benevolence. Benev- 
olence, however, means simply the wishing that our 
neighbours were happy, the helping to make them 
so, and lastly the being glad that they are so. But 
happiness must plainly be something besides benev- 
olence ; else, if I know that a man's highest happi- 
ness is in knowing that others are happy, all I shall 
try to procure for others is the knowledge that I am 
happy ; and thus the Utopian happiness would be ex- 
pressed completely in the somewhat homely formula, 
'/ am so glad that you are glad that I am glad.'' 
But this is, of course, not enough. All this gladness 
must be about something besides itself. Our good 
wishes for our neighbours must have some farther 



70 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

content than that they shall wish us well in return. 
What I wish them and what they wish me must be 
something that both they and I, each of us, take de- 
light in for ourselves. It will certainly be no delight 
to men to procure for others what they will take no 
delight in themselves, if procured by others for them. 
''For a joyful life, that is to say a pleasant life,'' as 
Sir Thomas More pithily puts it, '"is eitlier evil; and 
if so, tlien thou shouldest not only help no man 
thereto, hut rather as much as in thee lieth withdraw 
all men from it as noisome and hurtful ; or else if 
thou not only mayest, but also of duty art hound to 
procure it for others, why not chiefly for thyself, to 
whom thou art hound to show as Qnuch favour and 
gentleness as to others ? ' The fundamental question 
is, then, what life should a man try to procure for 
himself ? How shall he make it most joyful ? and 
how joyful will it be wiien he has done his utmost 
for it ? It is in terms of the individual, and of the 
individual only, that the value of life can at first be 
intelligibly stated. If the coin be not itself genuine, 
we shall never be able to make it so by merely shuf- 
fling it about from hand to hand, nor even by indef- 
initely multiplying it, A million sham bank notes 
will not make us any richer than a single one. 
Granting that the riches are really genuine, then the 
knowledge of their diffusion may magnify for each 
of us our own pleasure in possessing them. But it 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 71 

will only do this if the share that is possessed by 
each be itself something very great to begin with. 
Certain intense kinds of happiness may perhaps be 
raised to ecstasy by the thought that another shares 
them. But if the feeling in question be nothing more 
than cheerfulness, a man will not be made ecstatic 
by the knowledge that any number of other people 
are cheerful as well as he. When the happiness of 
two or more people rises to a certain temperature, 
then it is true a certain fusion may take place, and 
there may perhaps be a certain Joint result, arising 
from the sum of the parts. But below this melting 
point no fusion or union takes place at all, nor will 
any number of lesser happinesses melt and be massed 
together into one great one. Two great wits may in- 
crease each other's brilliancy, but two half-wits will 
not make a single whole one. A bad picture will not 
become good by being magnified, nor will a merely 
readable novel become more than readable by the 
publication of a million copies of it. Sujopose it were 
a matter of life and death to ten men to walk to York 
from London in a day. Were this feat a possible 
one, they might no doubt each do their best to help 
the others to accomplish it. But if it were beyond 
the power of each singly, they would not accomplish 
it as a body, by the whole ten leaving Charing Cross 
together, and each of them walking one tenth of the 
way. The distance they could all walk would be no 



72 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

greater than the distance they could each walk. In 
the same way the value of human life, as a whole, 
depends on the capacities of the individual human 
being, as an enjoying animal. If these capacities be 
great, we shall be eager in our desire to gratify them 
— certainly for ourselves, and perhaps also for others ; 
and this second desire may perhaps be great enough 
to modify and to guide the first. But unless these 
capacities he great, and the means of gratifying them 
definite, our impulses on our own behalf will become 
weak and sluggish, whilst those on behalf of others 
will become less able to control them. 

It will be apparent farther from this, that Just as 
happiness, unless some distinct positive quality, 
gains nothing as an end of action, either in value or 
distinctness, by a mere diffusion in the present — ^by 
an extension, as it were, laterally — so will it gain 
nothing further by giving it another dimension, and 
by prospectively increasing it in the future. We 
must know what it is first, before we know whether 
it is capable of increase. Apart from this knowl- 
edge, the conception of progress and the hope of 
some brighter destiny can add nothing to that re- 
quired something, which, so far as sociology can 
define it for us, we have seen to be so utterly in- 
adequate. Social conditions, it is true, we may ex- 
pect will go on improving ; we may hope that the 
social machinery will come gradually to run more 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOU^^DATION OF MORALITY. 73 

smootlily. But unless we know sonietliing positive 
to the contrary, the outcome of all this progress 
may be nothing but a more undistubed ennui or a 
more soulless sensuality. The rose-leaves may be 
laid more smoothly, and yet the man that lies on 
them may be wearier or more degraded. 

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow 
Creeps in tJiis petty pace from day to day ; 
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. 

This, for all that sociology can inform us to the 
contrary, may be the lesson really taught us by the 
positive philosophy of progress. 

But what the positivists themselves learn from it, 
is something very different. The following verses 
are George Eliot's : 

Oh may I join the choir inmsible 

Of those immortal dead who live again 

Tn lives made better by their presence. So 

To live is heaven. . . , 

To make iindying music in the world, 

Breathing us beauteous order that controls 

With groioing siccty the growing life of man. 

So we inherit that sweet purity 

For which we struggled, groaned, and agonised 

With widening retrospect, that bred despair. . , 

That better self shall live till human time 

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human shy 

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb 



74 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

Unread for ever. This is life to come. 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us loho strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, and he to other souls 
Tliat cup of strength in some great agony. 
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love. 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty. 
Be the siceet presence of a good diffused. 
And i?i diffusion ever more intense; 
So shall I join that choir invisible 
Whose music is the gladness of the iDorld. 

Here is the positive religion of benevolence and pro- 
gress, as preached to the modern world in the name 
of exact thought, presented to ns in an impassioned 
epitome. Here is hope, ardour, sympathy, and res- 
olution, enough and to spare. The first question is, — 
How are these kindled, and w^hat are they all about ? 
They must, as we have seen, be about something 
that the science of sociology will not discover for us. 
Nor can they last, if, like an empty stomach, they 
prey only upon themselves. They must have some 
solid content, and the great thing needful is to dis- 
cern this. It is quite true that to suffer, or even to 
die, will often seem dulce et decorum to a man ; but 
it will only seem so when the end he dies or suffers 
for is, in his estimation, a worthy one. A Christian 
might be gladly crucified if by so doing he could 
turn men from vice to virtue ; but a connoisseur in 
wine would not be crucified that his best friend 



SOCIOLOGY AS THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 75 

miglit prefer dry champagne to sweet. All the 
agony and the struggles, then, that the positivist 
saint suffers with such enthusiasm, depend alike for 
their value and their possibility on the object that 
is supposed to cause them. And in the verses just 
quoted this object is indeed named several times ; 
but it is named only incidentally and in vague 
terms, as if its nature and its value were self-evi- 
dent, and could be left to take care of themselves ; 
and the great thing to be dwelt upon were the means 
and not the end : whereas the former are really only 
the creatures of the latter, and can have no more 
honour than the latter is able to bestow upon them. 
Now the only positive ends named in these verses 
are ^ the hetter self \^ '' sweet purity,'' and '■smiles that 
haxe no cruelty.'' The conditions of these are ^beau- 
teous order, ^ and the result of them is the '■gladness 
of the world.'' The rest of the language used adds 
nothing to our positive knowledge, but merely makes 
us feel the want of it. The purest heaven, we are 
told, that the men of any generation can look for- 
ward to, Avill be the increased gladness that their 
right conduct will secure for a coming generation : 
and that gladness, when it comes, will be, as it were, 
the seraphic song of the blessed and holy dead. 
Thus every present, for the positivist, is the future 
life of the past ; earth is heaven perpetually realis- 
ing itself ; it is, as it were, an eternal choir-practice, 



76 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

in which the performers, though a little out of tune 
at present, are becoming momently more and more 
perfect. If this be so, there is a heaven of some 
sort about us at this moment. There is a musical 
gladness every day in our ears, our actual delight in 
which it might have been a heaven to our great- 
grandfathers to have anticipated in the last century. 
Now it is plain that this alleged music is not 
everywhere. Where, then, is it ? And will it, when 
we have found it, be found to merit all the praise 
. that is bestowed upon it ? Sociology, as we have 
seen, may show us how to secure to each performer 
his voice or his instrument ; but it will not show us 
how to make either the voice or the instrument a 
good one ; nor will it decide whether the orchestra 
shall perform Beethoven or Offenbach, or whether 
the chorus shall sing a penitential psalm or a drink- 
ing song. When we have discovered what the 
world's highest gladness can consist of, we will 
again come to the question of how far such gladness 
can be a general end of action. 



CHAPTER lY. 

GOODISrESS AS ITS OWN EEWAED. 

'Who cliooses me must give, and hazard all he hath.' Inscription on the 
Leaden Casket. Merchant of Venice. 

What I liave been nrging in the last chapter is 
really nothing more than the positivists admit them- 
selves. It will be found, if we study their utter- 
ances as a whole, that they by no means believe 
practically in their own professions, or consider that 
the end of action can be either defined and verified 
by sociology, or made attractive by sympathy. On 
the contrary, they confess plainly how inadequate 
these are by themselves, by continually supplement- 
ing them with additions from quite another quarter. 
But their fault is that this confession is, apparently, 
only half conscious with them ; and they are for 
ever reproducing arguments as sufficient which they 
have already in other moments implicitly condemned 
as meaningless. My aim has been, therefore, to put 
these arguments out of court altogether, and safely 
shut the doors on them. Hitherto they have played 
just the part of an idle populace, often turned out 
of doors, but as often breaking in again, and confus- 
ing with their noisy cheers a judgment that has not 

77 



78 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

yet been given. Let ns have clone, tlien, with the 
conditions of happiness till we know what happiness 
is. Let us have done with enthusiasm till we know^ 
if there is anything to be enthusiastic about. 

I have quoted George Eliot's cheers already, as 
expressing what this enthusiasm is. I will now quote 
her again, as showing how fully she recognises that 
its value depends upon its object, and that its only 
possible object must be of a definite, and in the first 
place, of a personal nature. In her novel of Daniel 
Deronda^ the large part of the interest hangs on 
which way the heroine's character will develop 
itself ; and this interest, in the opinion of the author- 
ess, is of a very intense kind. Why should it be ? 
she asks explicitly. And she gives her answer in 
the following very remarkable and very instructive 
passage : 

' Could there he a slenderer, more insignificant 
thread,'' she says, 'm human history, than this con- 
sciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences 
of the way in which she could make her life pleas- 
ant f in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vig- 
our making armies of themselves, and the universal 
hinshifp was declaring itself fiercely : tohen icomen 
on the other side of the world would not mourn for 
the husbands and sons loho died bravely in a com- 
mon cause ; and inen, stinted of bread, on one side 
of the world, heard of that willing loss and were 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 79 

patient ; a time lolien tlie soul of man loas loaJdng 
the pulses wJiich had for centuries 'been heating in 
Mm unheard, until their full sense made a neio 
life of terror or of joy. 

^What in the midst of that mighty drama are 
girls and their blind visions ? They are the Tea or 
Nay of that good for which men are enduring and 
fighting. In these delicate vessels is borne onward 
through the ages the treasure of hitman affections.'' 

Now here we come to solid ground at last. Here 
is an emphatic and frank admission of all that I was 
urging in the last chapter ; and the required end of 
action and test of conduct is brought to a focus and 
localized. It is not described, it is true ; but a nar- 
row circle is drawn round it, and our future search 
for it becomes a matter of comparative ease. We 
are in a position now to decide whether it exists, or 
does not exist. It consists primarily and before all 
things in the choice by the individual of one out of 
many modes of happiness — the election of a certain 
'■way,'' in George Eliot's words, ^ in which he loill 
make his life pleasanf There are many sets of 
pleasure open to him ; but there is one set, it is said, 
more excellent, beyond comparison, than the others ; 
and to choose these, and these alone, is what will 
give us part in the holy value of life. The choice 
and the refusal of them is the Yea and the Nay of 
all that makes life worth living ; and is the source, 



80 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

to the positivists, of the solemnity, the terrors, and 
sweetness of the whole ethical vocabulary. ' What 
then are the alternative pleasures that life offers 
me ? In how many loays am I capable of feeling 
my existence a blessing f and in what way shall I 
feel the blessing of it most Tieenly f ' This is the 
great life-question ; it may be asked indifferently by 
any individual ; and in the positivist answer to it, 
which will be the same for all, and of universal ap- 
plication, must lie the foundation of the positive 
moral system. 

And that system, as I have said before, professes 
to be essentially a moral one, in the old religious 
sense of the word. It retains the old ethical vocabu- 
lary ; and lays the same intense stress on the old 
ethical distinctions, N'or is this a mere profession 
only. We shall see that the system logically re- 
quires it. One of its chief virtues — indeed the only 
virtue in it we have defined hitherto — is, as has been 
seen, an habitual self-denial. But a denial of what % 
Of something, plainly, that if denied to ourselves, 
can be conveyed as a negative or positive good to 
others. But the good things that are thus trans- 
ferable cannot plainly be the ''highest good,'' or mor- 
ality w^ould consist largely of a surrender of its own 
end. This end must evidently be something inward 
and inalienable, just as the religious end M^as. It is 
a certain inward state of the heart, and of the heart's 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN EEWARD. gl 

affections. For this inward state to be fully pro- 
duced, and maintained generally, a certain suffi- 
ciency of material well-being may be requisite ; but 
without this inward state such sufficiency will be 
morally valueless. Day by day we must of course 
have our daily bread. But the positivists must 
maintain, just as the Christians did, that man does 
not live by bread alone ; and that his life does not 
consist in the abundance of the things that he pos- 
sesses. And thus when they are brought face to face 
with the matter, we find them all, with one consent, 
condemning as false the same allurements that were 
condemned by Christianity ; and pointing, as it did, 
to some other treasure that will not wax old — some 
water, the man who drinks of which will never thirst 
more. 

Now what is this treasure — this inward state of the 
heart? What is its analysis, and why is it so pre- 
cious ? As yet we are quite in the dark as to this. JN"o 
positive moralist has as yet shown us, in any satis- 
factory way, either of these things. This statement, 
I know, will be contradicted by many ; and, until it 
is explained further, it is only natural that it should 
be. It will be said that a positive human happiness 
of just the kind needed has been put before the 
world again and again ; and not only put before it, 
but earnestly followed and reverently enjoyed by 
many. Have not truth, benevolence, purity, and, 
6 



82 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

above all, pure affection, been, to many, positive 
ends of action for their own sakes, without any- 
thought, as Dr. Tyndall says, '' of any reward or 
punisliment looming in the future ' 1 Is not virtue 
followed in the noblest way, when its followers, if 
asked w^hat reward they look for, can say to it, as 
Thomas Aquinas said to Christ. ''Nil nisi te, 
Domine ' ? And has not it so been followed ? and is 
not the positivist position, to a large extent at any 
rate, proved? 

Is it not true, as has been said by a recent writer, 
that ^ ' lives nourislied and inmgorated by [a purely 
human] ideal liave been, and still may he, seen 
amongst us, and the appearance of hut a single ex- 
ample proves the adequacy of the belief? ' 

I reply that the fact is entirely true, and the in- 
ference entirely false. And this brings me at once 
to a point I have before alluded to — to the most sub- 
tle source of the entire positivist error — the source 
secret and unsuspected, of so much rash confidence. 

The positive school can, and do, as w^e have seen, 
point to certain things in life w^hich have every ap- 
pearance, at first sight, of adequate moral ends. 
Their adequacy seems to be verified by every right 
feeling, and also by practical experiment. But there 
is one great fact that is forgotten. The positive 
school, when they deal with life, profess to exhibit 

^ Vide Pessimism, by James Sully, 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWABD. 83 

its resources to us wholly free from the false aids of 
religion. They profess (if I may coin a word) to 
have de-religionized it before they deal with it. But 
about this matter they betray a most strange igno- 
rance. They think the task is far simpler than it is. 
They seem to look on religion as existing nowhere 
except in its pure form, in the form of distinct devo- 
tional feeling, or in the conscious assents of faith ; 
and, these once got rid of, they fancy that life is de- 
religionized. But the process thus far is really only 
begun ; indeed, as far as immediate results go, it is 
hardly even begun ; for it is really but a very small 
proportion of religion that exists pure. The greater 
part of it has entered into combination with the acts 
and feelings of life, thus forming as it were, a kind 
of amalgam with them, giving them new properties, 
a new colour, a new consistence. To de-religionize 
life, then, it is not enough to condemn creeds and to 
abolish prayers. We must further sublimate the 
beliefs and feelings, which prayers and creeds hold 
pure, out of the lay life around us. Under this pro- 
cess, even if imperfectly performed, it will soon be- 
come clear that religion in greater or less proportions 
is lurking everywhere. We shall see it yielded up 
even by things in which we should least look for it 
— by wit, by humour, by secular ambition, by most 
forms of vice, and by our daily light amusements. 
Much more shall we see it yielded up by heroism, by 



84 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

purity, by affection, and by love of trutli — by all 
jbliose things that the positivists most specially praise. 

The positivists think, it would seem, that they 
had but to kill God, and that his inheritance shall 
be ours. They strike out accordingly the theistic 
beliefs in question, and then turn instantly to life : 
they sort its resources, count its treasures, and then 
say, ''Aim at this, and tJiis, and tliis. See liow 
beautiful is holiness ; see liow rapturous is pleasure. 
Surely these are worth seeking for their own saJces, 
without any ''''reioard or punishment looming in the 
future.'^'' ' They find, in fact, the interests and the 
sentiments of the world' s present life — all the glow 
and all the gloom of it — lying b,efore them like the 
colours on a painter's palette, and think they have 
nothing to do but set to work and use them. But 
let them wait a moment ; they are in far too great a 
hurry. The palette and its colours are not nearly 
ready for them. 

One of the colours of life — religion, that is — a 
colour which, by their own admission, has been 
hitherto an important one, they have swept clean 
away. They have swept it clean away, and let them 
remember why they have done so. It may be a 
pleasing colour, or it may not : that is a matter of 
taste. But the reason why it is to be got rid of is 
that it is not a fast colour. It is found to fade in- 
stantly in the spreading sunlight of knowledge. It 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 85 

is rapidly getting dim and dull and dead. When 
once it is gone, we shall never be able to restore it, 
and our future pictures of life must be tinted with- 
out its aid. They therefore profess loudly that they 
will employ it no longer. 

But there is this point, this all-important point, 
that quite escapes them. They sweep the colour, in 
its pure state, clea.n off the palette ; and then pro- 
fess to show us by experiment that they can get on 
perfectly well without it. But they never seem to 
suspect that it may be mixed up with the colours 
they retain, and be the secret of their depth and 
lustre. Let them see whether religion be not lurk- 
ing there, as a subtle colouring principle in all their 
pigments, even a grain of it producing effects that 
else were quite impossible. Let them only begin 
this analysis, and it will very soon be clear to them 
that to cleanse life of religion is not so simple a pro- 
cess as they seem to fancy it. Its actual dogmas 
may be readily put away from us ; not so the effect 
which these dogmas have worked during the course 
of centuries. In disguised forms they are around us 
everywhere ; they confront us in every human inter- 
est, in every human pleasure. They have beaten 
themselves into life ; they have eaten their way into it. 
Like a secret sap they have flavoured every fruit in 
the garden. They are like a powerful drug, a stim- 
ulant, that has been injected into our whole system. 



86 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

If then we conld appraise tlie vigour and value of 
life independent of religion, we can draw no direct 
conclusions from observing it in its present state. 
Before such observations can teach us anything, there 
is a great deal that will have to be made allowance for : 
and the positive school, when they reason from life 
as it is, are building therefore on an utterly unsound 
foundation. It is emphatically untrue to say that a 
single example in the present day, or for matter of 
that any number of examples, either goes or can go 
any way towards proving the adequacy of any non- 
religious formula. For all such formulae have first 
to be further analysed before we know how far they 
are really non-religious ; and secondly the religious 
element that will be certainly found existing in them 
will have, hypothetically, to be removed. 

It would be well if the positive school would spend 
in this spiritual analysis but a little of that skill 
they have attained to in their analysis of matter. In 
their experiments, for instance, on spontaneous 
generation, what untold pains have been taken ! 
With what laborious thought, with what emulous 
ingenuity, have they struggled to completely sterilise 
the fluids in which they are to seek for the new pro- 
duction of life ! How jealously do they guard against 
leaving there any already existing germs ! How 
easily do- they tell us their experiments may be 
vitiated by the smallest oversight ! 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 37 

Surely spiritual matters are worthy of an equally 
careful treatment. For what we have here to study 
is not the production of the lowest forms of animal 
life, but the highest forms of human happiness. 
These were once thought to be always due to relig- 
ion. The modern doctrine is that they are produ- 
cible without such aid. Let us treat, then, the 
beauty of holiness, the love of truth, ' tJie treasure 
of liuman affection,'' and so forth, as Dr. Tyndall 
has treated the infusions in which life is said to 
originate. Let us boil them down, so to speak, and 
destroy every germ of religion in them, and then 
see how far they will generate the same ecstatic 
happiness. And let us treat in this way vice no less 
than virtue. Having once done this, we may hon- 
estly claim whatever yet remains to us. Then, we 
shall see what materials of happiness we can, as 
positive thinkers, call our own. Then, a positive 
moral system, if any such be possible, will begin to 
have a real value for us — then, but not till then. 

Such an analysis as this must be naturally a work 
of time ; and much of it must be performed by each 
one of us for ourselves. But a sample of the opera- 
tion can be given here, which will show plainly 
enough its nature, and the ultimate results of it. I 
shall begin, for this purpose, with reconsidering the 
moral end generally, and the three primary charac- 
teristics that are ascribed, by all parties, to it, as 



88 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

essentials. I shall point out, generally also, how 
much of religion is embodied in all these ; and shall 
then proceed to one or two concrete examples, taken 
from the pleasures and passions that animate the 
life around us. 

These three characteristics of the moral end are 
its inwardness, its importance, and, within certain 
limits, its absolute character, 

I begin with its inwardness. I have spoken of 
this several times already, but the matter is so im- 
portant that it will well bear repetition. By calling 
the moral end inward, I mean that it resides prima- 
rily not in action, but in motives to action ; in the 
will, not in the deed ; not in what we actually do, 
but in what we actually endeavour to do ; in the love 
we give, rather than in the love that we receive. 
What defiles a man is that which comes out of his 
heart — evil thoughts, murders, adulteries. The 
thoughts may never find utterance in a word, the 
murders and adulteries may never be fulfilled in 
act ; and yet, if a man be restrained, not by his own 
will, but only by outer circumstances, his immo- 
rality will be the same. The primary things we are 
'■res'ponsiMefor^'' observes a recent positive writer,' 
are '■frames of uiind into loMcli we knowingly and 
willingly worJc ourselves ' : and when these are once 

^ Professor Clifford ; ' Ethics of Belief/ Contemporary Review, Jan. 

1877. 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 89 

wrong, he adds, ' tliey are lorong for ever : no acci- 
dental failure of their good or eml fruits can possi- 
bly alter that.'' And as with what is wrong or 
vicious, so with what is right or virtuous ; this in a 
like manner proceeds out of the mind or heart. 
' The gladness of true heroism,'' says Dr. Tyndall, 
' visits the heart of him who is really competent to 
say, " I court truth.'''' ' It is not, be it observed, the 
objective attainment of truth that creates the glad- 
ness. It is the subjective desire, the subjective reso- 
lution. The moral end, for the positivist just as" 
much as for the believer, is a certain inward state of 
the heart, or mind — a state which will of necessity, 
if possible, express itself in action, but whose value 
is not to be measured by the success of that expres- 
sion. The battle-ground of good and evil is within 
us ; and the great human event is the issue of the 
struggle between them. 

And this leads us on to the second point. The 
language used on all hands respecting this struggle, 
implies that its issue is of an importance great out 
of all proportion to our own consciousness of the re- 
sults of it, nay, even that it is independent of our 
consciousness. It is implied that though a man may 
be quite ignorant of the state of his own heart, and 
though no one else can so much as guess at it, what 
that state is is of great and peculiar moment. If 
this were not so, and the importance of our inner 



90 J^S LIFE WOUTJI LIVING? 

state had reference only to our o^\ti feelings about 
it, self-deception would be as good as virtue. To 
believe we were upright, pure, and benevolent would 
be as good as to be so. We might have all the 
pleasures of morality wdth none of its inconveni- 
ences ; for it is easy, if I may borrow a phrase of 
Mr. Tennyson's, to become so false tJiat ice talce our- 
selves for true ; and thus, tested by any pain or joy 
that we ourselves were conscious of, the results of 
the completest falsehood would be the same as those 
of the completest virtue. 

But let a man be never so perfect an instance of a 
result like this, no positivist moralist would contend 
that he was virtuous, or that he could be said, at his 
death, to have found the true treasure of life. On 
the contrary his career would be regarded as, in the 
profoundest sense, a tragedy. It is for this reason 
that such a value is set at present upon feminine 
purity, and that we are accustomed to call the wo- 
man ruined that has lost it. The outer harm done 
may not be great, and may lead to no ill conse- 
quences. The harm is all within : the tragedy is in 
the soul itself. But — and this is more important 
still — even here the harm may not be recognised : 
the act in question may lead to no remorse ; and yet 
despite this, the case will be made no better. On 
the contrary it will be made a great deal worse. 
Any father or husband w^ould recognise this, who 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 91 

was not professedly careless about all moral matters 
altogether. It would not, for instance, console a 
positivist for Ms daughter's seduction to know that 
the matter was hushed up, and that it gave the lady 
herself no concern whatever. It is implied in the 
language of all who profess to regard morality, that 
whether the guilty person be conscious or no of any 
remorse or sorrow, the same harm has been done 
by what we call guilt. 

There is, however (and this brings us to the third 
point), a very large part of the world that, as a fact, 
no matter what it professes, really sets upon moral- 
ity no true value whatever. If it has ever realised 
at all what morality is, it has done so only partially ; 
it has been more impressed with its drawbacks than 
with its attractions, and it becomes practically hap- 
pier and more contented, the more it forgets the very 
idea of virtue. But it is implied, as we have seen, 
in the usual language of all of us that, let the vicious 
be as happy as possible, they have no right to such 
a happiness, and that if they choose to take it, it 
will in some way or other be the worse for them. 
This language evidently implies farther that there is 
some standard by which happiness is to be measured, 
quite apart from its completeness, and from our in- 
dividual desire for it. That standard is something 
absolute, beyond and above the taste of any single 
man or of any body of men. It is a standard to 



92 J'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

which the human race can be authoritatively ordered 
to conform, or be despised, derided, and hated, if it 
refuse to do so. It is implied that those who find 
their happiness in virtue have a right to order and to 
force, if possible, all others to do the same. Unless 
we believed this there would be no such thing as 
moral earnestness in the propagation of any system. 
There could, indeed, be no such thing as propagan- 
dism at all. If a man (to use an example of Mill's) 
preferred to be a contented pig rather than a discon- 
tented Socrates, we should have no positive reason 
for thinking him wrong ; even did we think so we 
should have no motive for telling him so ; even if 
we told him, we should have no means of convinc- 
ing him. 

Those, then, who regard morality as the rule of 
action, and the one key that can unlock for each of 
us the true treasure of life, who talk of things being 
noble and sacred and heroic, who call our responsi- 
bilities and our privileges ' awful, and who urge on 
a listless world the earnestness and the solemnity of 
existence — all those, I say, who use such language 
as this, imply of the moral end three necessary 
things : first, that its essence is inward, in the heart 
of man ; secondly, that its value is incalculable, and 
its attainment the only true happiness for us ; third- 

' ' An aicful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help 
to create a world in which posterity will live ! ' — Professor Clifford. 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 93 

]y, that its standard is something absolute, and not 
in the competence of any man or of all men to alter 
or abolish. That this is true may be very easily 
seen. Deny any one of these propositions ; say that 
the moral end consists in something outward and 
alienable, not in something inward and inalienable ; 
that its importance is small, and second to many 
other things ; that its standard is not absolute, but 
varies according to individual taste ; and morality 
becomes at once impossible to preach, and not worth 
preaching. 

Now for all these characteristics of the end of life, 
the theism that modern thought is rejecting could 
offer a strictly logical basis. And first, as to its im- 
portance. Here it may be said, certainly, that theism 
cuts the knot, and does not untie it. But at all events 
it gets rid of it ; and in the following way. The 
theist confesses freely that the importance of the 
moral end is a thing that the facts of life, as we now 
know them, will never properly explain to us. It 
can at present be divined and augured only ; its value 
is one of promise rather than of performance ; and 
the possession itself is a thing that passes under- 
standing. It belongs to a region of mystery into 
which neither logic nor experiment will ever suffice 
to carry us ; and whose secrets are beyond the reach 
of any intellectual aeronaut. But it is a part of the 
theistic creed that such a region is ; and that the 



94 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

tilings tliat pass understanding are tlie most import- 
ant tilings of life. Nothing would be gained, how- 
ever, by postulating merely a mystery — an unknow- 
able. This must be so far known by the theist, that 
he knows its connection with himself. He must 
know, too, that if this connection is to have any ef- 
fect on him, it must be not merely temporary, but 
permanent and indissoluble. Such a connection he 
finds in his two distinctive doctrines — the existence 
of a personal God, which gives him the connection ; 
and his own personal immortality, which perpetuates 
it. Thus the theist, upon his own theory, has an eye 
ever upon him. He is in constant relationship with 
a conscious omnipotent Bffing, in whose likeness he 
is in some sort formed, and to which he is in some 
sort kin. To none of his actions is this Being indif- 
ferent ; and with this Being his relations for good or 
evil will never cease. Thus, though lie'~ma;y not re- 
alise their true nature now, though he may not re- 
alise how infinitely good the good is, or how infinitely 
evil the evil, there is a day in store for him when his 
eyes will be opened, and what he now sees only 
through a glass darkly, he will see face to face. 

The objectivity of the moral end — or rather the 
objective standard of the subjective end — is explained 
in the same way. The standard is God's will, not 
man' s immediate happiness. And yet to this will, as 
soon as, by natural or supernatural means, we discern 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 95 

it, the Godlike part of our nature at once responds : 
it at once acknowledges it as eternal and divine, 
although we can give no logical reasons for such 
acknowledgment. 

By the light, too, of these same beliefs, the inward- 
ness of the moral end assumes an explicable mean- 
ing. Man' s primary duty is towards God; his sec- 
ondary duty is towards his brother men ; and it is 
only from the filial relation that the fraternal springs. 
The moral end, then, is so precious in the eyes of the 
theist, because the inward state that it consists of is 
agreeable to what God wills — a God who reads the 
heart, and who cannot be deceived. And the theist' s 
peace or gladness in his highest moral actions springs 
not so much from the consciousness of what he does 
or is, as of the reasons why he does or is it — reasons 
that reach far away beyond the earth and its desti- 
nies, and connect him with some timeless and holy 
mystery. 

Thus theism, whether it be true or no, can give a 
logical and a full account of the supposed nature of 
the moral end, and of its supposed importance. Let 
lis turn now to positivism, and consider what is its po- 
sition. The positivist, we must remember, conceives 
of the moral end in the same way, and sets upon it the 
same value. Let us see how far his own premisses 
will give him any support in this. These premisses, so 
far as they differ from those of theism, consist of two 



96 J'S LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

great denials : there is no personal God, and there is 
no personal immortality. We will glance rapidly at 
the direct results of these. 

In the first place, th.Qy confine all the life \^4th which 
we can have the least moral connection to the surface 
of this earth, and to the limited time for which life 
and consciousness can exist upon it. They isolate 
the moral law, as I shall show more clearly hereafter, 
from any law or force in the universe that may be 
wider and more permanent. When the individual 
dies, he can only be said to live by metaphor, in the 
results of his outward actions. When the race dies, 
in no thinkable way can we say that it will live at all. 
Everything will then be as though it never had been. 
Whatever humanity may have done before its end 
arrives, however high it may have raised itself, how- 
ever low it may have sunk itself, 

The event 
Will trammel up the consequence, and catch 
With its success surcease. 

All the vice of the world, and all its virtue, all its 
pleasures and all its pains, will have effected nothing. 
They will all have faded like an unsubstantial pa- 
geant, and not left a wrack behind. 

Here, then, the importance of morality at once 
changes both its dimensions and its kind. It is con- 
fined within narrow limitations of space and time. 
It is no longer a thing we can talk vaguely about, or 



GOODNESS AS ITS OWN REWARD. 97 

to wliicli any sonnding but indefinite phrases will be 
applicable. We can no longer say either to the in- 
dividual or the race, 

Choose well, and your choice is 
Brief, hut yet endless. ^ 

We can only say that it is brief, and that bye and 
bye what it was will be no matter to anyone. 

Still within these limits it may be said, certainly, 
that it is a great thing for us that we should be hap- 
py ; and if it be true that the moral end brings the 
greatest happiness, then it is man' s greatest achieve- 
ment to attain to the moral end. But when we say 
that the greatest happiness resides in the moral end, 
we must be careful to see what it is we mean. We 
may mean that as a matter of fact men generally give 
a full assent to this, and act accordingly, which is the 
most obvious falsehood that could be uttered on any 
subject ; or we may mean — indeed, if we mean any- 
thing we must mean — that they would give a full as- 
sent, and act accordingly, could their present state 
of mind undergo a complete change, and their eyes 
be opened, which at present are fast closed. But ac- 
cording to the positivist theory, this hypothesis is in 
most cases an impossibility. The moral end, as we 
have seen, is an inward state of the heart ; and the 
heart, on the showing of the positivists, is for each 

' Goethe, translated by Carlyle. 

7 



98 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

man an absolute solitude. No one can gain admis- 
sion to it but by Ms assistance ; and to the larger 
part no one can ever gain admission at all. 

Thus ill the seas of life enisled. 
With echoing straits between us thrown. 

Dotting the shoreless watery wild. 
We mortal myriads live alone. 

So says Mr. Matthew Arnold ; and the gentle Keble 
utters the same sentiment, remarking, with a deli- 
cate pathos, how seldom those even who have known 
us best and longest 

Know half the reason why we smile or sigh. 

Thus in the recesses of his own soul each man is, for 
the positivist, as much alone as if he vv^ere the only 
conscious thing in the universe ; and his whole inner 
life, when he dies, will, to use some words of George 
Eliot's that I have already quoted, 

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, 
Unread for ever. 

'No one shall enquire into his inward thoughts, much 
less shall anyone Judge him for them. To no one 
except himself can he in any way have to answer for 
them. 

Such is the condition of the individual according 
to the positivist theory. It is evident, therefore, 
that one of the first results of jDositivism is to de- 
stroy even the rudiments of any machinery by which 
one man could govern, with authority, the inward 



O00BNE88 AS ITS OWIi REWARD. 99 

kingdom of anothei' ; and the moral imperative is 
reduced to an empty vaunt. For what can be an 
emxotier flourish than for one set of men, and these 
a confessed minority, to proclaim imperious laws to 
others, which they can never get the others to obey, 
and which are essentially meaningless to the only 
people to whom they are not superfluous ? Suppose 
that, on positive grounds, I find pleasure in humil- 
ity, and my friend finds pleasure in pride, and so 
far as we can form a Judgment the happiness of us 
both is equal ; what j)Ossible grounds can I have for 
calling my state better than his ? Were I a theist, 
I should have the best of grounds, for I should be- 
lieve that hereafter my friend' s present contentment 
would be dissipated, and would give place to de- 
spair. But as a positivist, if his contentment do but 
last his lifetime, what can I say except this, that he 
has chosen what, for him, was his better part for 
ever, and no God or man will ever take it away from 
him ? To say then that his immoral state was worse 
than my moral state would be a phrase incapable of 
any practical meaning. It might mean that, could 
my friend be made to think as I do, he would be 
happier than he is at present ; but we have here an 
impossible hypothesis, and an unverifiable conclu- 
sion. It is true enough that I might present to my 
friend some image of my own inward state, and of 
all the happiness it gave me; but if, having com- 



100 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

pared his happiness and mine as well as he could, 
he still liked his own best, exhortation would have 
no power, and reproach no meaning. 

Here, then, are three results — simple, immediate, 
and necessary — of positivism, on the moral end. Of 
the three characteristics at present supposed essen- 
tial to it, positivism eliminates two and materially 
modifies the third. 

In the first place, the importance of the moral 
end is altogether changed in character. It has noth- 
ing in it whatever of the infinite, and a scientific 
forecast can already see the end of it. 

In the second place, it is nothing absolute, and not 
being absolute is incapable of being enforced. 

In the third place, its value, such as it is, is meas- 
ured only by the conscious happiness that its pos- 
session gives us, or the conscious pains that its loss 
gives us. 

Still it may be contended with plausibility that the 
moral end, when once seen, is sufficient to attract us 
by its own inalienable charm, and can hold its own 
independently of any further theories as to its na- 
ture and its universality. It remains now to come 
to practical life, and see if this really be so ; to see 
if the pleasures in life that are supposed the highest 
will not lose their attractiveness when robbed of the 
three characteristics of which the positive theory 
robs them. 



CHAPTER V. 

LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 

"EpcDva ds, vov rvpavvov avSpcSv, 
Tov Tcci' 'Acppodirai 
$iXrdra)v BaXdficov 
KXySovxor, ov dsfii^o^Ev, 
nepBovva. — Euripides. 

I WILL again re- state, in other words than my own, 
the theory we are now going to test by the actual 
facts of life. ' The assertion,'' says Professor Hux- 
ley, ' tliat morality is in any way dependent on cer- 
tainpTiilosopMcal problems, produces the same effect 
on my mind as if one should say that a man* s vision 
depends on his theory of sight, or that he has no busi- 
ness to he sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless 
he has formed definite views as to the nature of gin- 
ger.'' Or, to put the matter in slightly different 
language, the sorts of happiness, we are told, that are 
secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as re- 
gards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as 
constant and as universal, as is the perception of the 
outer world secured to us by our eyesight, or as the 
sensation formed on the palate by the application of 
ginger to it. 

Love, for instance, according to this view, is as 

101 



102 J'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

simple a delight for men in its highest forms as it is 
for animals in its lowest. What George Eliot calls 
' tlie treasure of human affection ' depends as little 
for its value on any beliefs outside itself as does the 
treasure of animal appetite ; and Just as no want of 
religious faith can deprive the animals of the last, so 
no want of religious faith can deprive mankind of 
the first. It will remain a stable possession to us, 
amid the wreck of creeds, giving life a solemn and 
intense value of its ovfn. It will never fail us as a 
sure test of conduct. Whatever guides us to this 
treasure we shall know is moral ; whatever tends to 
withdraw us from it we shall know is immoral. 

Such is the positivist theory as to all the higher 
pleasures of life, of which affection confessedly is 
one of the chief, and also the most obviously hu- 
man. Let us proceed now from generalities to special 
concrete facts, and see how far this theory is borne out 
by them. And we can find none better than those 
which are now before us — the special concrete facts 
of affection, and of sexual affection in particular. 

The affection of man for woman — or, as it will be 
best to call it, love — has been ever since time was, 
one of the chief elements in the life of man. But it 
was not till Christianity had very fully developed 
itself that it assumed the peculiar importance that 
is now claimed for it. For the ancient world it was 
a passion sure to come to most men, and that would 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 103 

bring joy or sorrow to tliem as the case miglit be. 
The worldly wisdom of some convinced them that it 
gave more Joy than sorrow ; so they took and used 
it as long as it chanced to please them. The worldly 
wisdom of others convinced them that it gave more 
sorrow than joy, so they did all they could, like 
Lucretius, to school themselves into a contempt for 
it. But for the modern world it is on quite a differ- 
ent footing, and its value does not depend on such a 
chance balance of pains and pleasures. The latter 
are not of the same nature as the former, and so can- 
not be outweighed by them. In the judgment of the 
modern world, 

'Tis better to have loved and lost 
Than never to have loved at all. 

To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be in- 
cumbent upon all men, is yet endowed with some- 
thing that is almost of the nature of a duty. If a 
man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral 
misfortune, if not as a moral fault in him. And 
when a man can love, and does love successfully, 
then it is held that his whole nature has burst out 
into blossom. The imaginative literature of the 
modern world centres chiefly about this human cri- 
sis ; and its importance in literature is but a reflec- 
tion of its importance in life. It is, as it were, the 
sun of the world of sentiment — the source of its 
lights and colours, and also of its shadows. It is 



104 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

the crown of man' s existence ; it gives life its Mgli- 
est quality ; and, if we can believe what those who 
have known it tell us, earth under its influence 
seems to be melting into, and to be almost joined 
with, heaven. 

All this language, however, about love, no matter 
how true in a certain sense it may be, is emphati- 
cally true about it in a certain sense only, and is by 
no means to be taken without reserve. It is em- 
phatically not true about love in general, but only 
about love as modified in a certain special way. The 
form of the affection, so to speak, is more important 
than the substance of it. It will need but little con- 
sideration to show us that this is so. Love is a 
thing that can take countless forms ; and were not 
the form, for the modern world, the thing of the 
first importance, the praise bestowed upon all forms 
of it would be equal, or graduated only with refer- 
ence to intensity. But the very reverse of this is 
the case really. In our estimate of an affection, its 
intensity, though doubtless of great importance, is 
yet of an importance that is clearly secondary. Else 
things that the modern world regards as the most 
abominable might be on a level with the things it re- 
gards as most pure and holy ; the lovers of Athens 
might even put to shame with their passion the cahn 
sacramental constancy of many a Christian pair ; 
and the whole fabric of modern morals would be 



LOVB AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 105 

undermined. For, according to the modern concep- 
tion of morals, love can not only give life its highest 
quality, but its lowest also. If it can raise man to 
the angels, it can also sink him below the beasts ; 
and as to its intensity, it is a force which will carry 
him in the one direction just as well as the other. 
Kind and not degree is the first thing needful. It 
is the former, and not the latter, that essentially 
separates David and Jonathan from Harmodius and 
Aristogeiton, St. Elizabeth from Cleopatra, the be- 
loved disciple from Antinous, How shall we love ? 
is the great question for us. It comes long before, 
How much shall we love \ 

Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the type 
that would now be most highly reverenced, and try 
to understand something of what their affection is. 
It is, of course, impossible here to treat such a sub- 
ject adequately ; for, as Mr. Carlyle says, ' except 
musically, and in the language of poetry, it can 
hardly he so tnucli as spoken about.'' But enough 
for the present purpose can perhaps be said. In the 
first place, then, the affection in question will be 
seen to rest mainly upon two things — firstly, on the 
consciousness of their own resjpective characters on 
the part of each ; and, secondly, on the idea formed 
by each of the character of the other. Each must 
have a faith, for instance, in his or her own purity, 
and each must have a like faith also in the purity of 



106 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

the other. Thus, to begin with the first requisites, 
a man can only love a woman in the highest sense 
when he does so with a perfectly clear conscience. 
There must be no obstacle between them which 
shocks his sense of right, or which, if known by the 
woman, would shock hers. Were the affection in- 
dulged in, in spite of such an obstacle, its fine qual- 
ity would be injured, no matter how great its inten- 
sity ; and, instead of a moral blessing, it would be- 
come a moral curse. An exquisite expression of the 
necessity of this personal sense of rightness may be 
read into the well-known lines, 

I could not love thee, dear, so well. 
Loved I not honour more. 

ISTor shall we look on honour here as having refer- 
ence only to external acts and conditions. It has 
reference equally, if not more, to the inward state 
of the heart. The man must be conscious not only 
that he is loving the right woman, but that he is 
loving her in the right way. ' If I loved not purity 
more than you,'' he would say to her, '' I were not 
worthy of you.'' 

And further, just as he requires to possess this 
taintless conscience himself, so does he require to be 
assured that the like is possessed by her. Unless 
he knows that she loves purity more than him, there 
is no meaning in his aspiration that he may be 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 107 

found worthy of her. The gift of her affection that 
is of such value to him, is not of value because it is 
affection simply, but because it is affection of a high 
kind ; and its elevation is of more consequence to 
him than its intensity, or even than its continuance. 
He would sooner that at the expense of its intensity 
it remained pure, than that at the expense of its 
purity it remained intense. Othello was certainly 
not a husband of the highest type, and yet we see 
something of this even in his case. His sufferings 
at his wife's supposed inconstancy have doubtless 
in them a large selfish element. Much of them is 
caused by the mere passion of jealousy. But the 
deepest sting of all does not lie here. It lies rather 
in the thought of what his wife has done to herself, 
than of what she has done to him. This is what 
overcomes him. 

The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets. 
Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth, 
And mil not hear it. 

He could have borne anything but a soul's tragedy 
like this : 

Alas ! to make me 
A fixed figure for the time of scorn 
To point his slow unmoving finger at ! 
Yet I could bear that too, well — very tcell: 
But there, where I have garnered up my heart, 
Where I must eitJier live, or hear no life ; 



108 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

2 he fountain from the which my current runs 
Or else dries up ; to he discarded thence ! 
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads 
To knot and gender in ! 

Whenever he was with her, Desdemona might still 
be devoted to him. She might only give to Cassio 
what she could not give to her husband. But to 
Othello this would be no comfort. The fountain 
would be polluted '■from which his current runs ' ; 
and though its waters might still flow for him, he 
would not care to touch them. If this feeling is 
manifest in such a love as Othello' s, much more is it 
manifest in love of a higher type. It is expressed 
thus, for instance, by the heroine of Mrs. Craven's 
'' Recit (Tune Soeur.'' 'i can indeed say, '^ she says, 
' tJiat loe never loved each other so much as when we 
saw how we hoth loved God : ' and again, ' My hus- 
hand would not have loved me as he did, if he had not 
loved God a great deal more? This language is of 
course distinctly religious ; but it embodies a mean- 
ing that is appreciated by the positive school as well. 
In positivist language it might be expressed thus : 
' My husband would not have loved rne as he did, if 
he would not, sooner than love me in any other way, 
have ceased to love me altogether.'' It is clear that 
this sentiment is proper, nay essential, to positivist 
affection, Just as well as to Christian. Any pure and 
exalted love would at once change its character, if, 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 109 

witliout any further change, it merely believed it 
were free to change it. Its strongest element is the 
consciousness, not that it is of such a character only, 
but that this character is the right one. The ideal 
bride and bridegroom, the ideal man and wife, would 
not value purity as they are supposed to do, did they 
not believe that it was not only different from im- 
purity, but essentially and incalculably better than 
it. For the positivist, just as much as the Christian, 
this sense of rightness in love is interfused with the 
affection proper, and does as it were give wings to it. 
It far more than makes good for the lovers any loss 
of intensity that may be created by the chastening 
down of passion : and figuratively at least, it may 
be said to make them conscious that ' underneath 
them are the einerlasting arms.'' 

Here then in love, as the positive school at present 
offer it to us, are all these three characteristics to 
which that school, as we have seen, must renounce 
all right. It is characterised as conforming to some 
special and absolute standard, of which no positive 
account can be given ; the conformity is inward, and 
so cannot be enforced ; and for all that positive 
knowledge can show us, its imjDortance may be a 
dream. 

We shall realise this better if we consider a love 
from which these three characteristics have, as far as 
possible, been abstracted — a love which professes 



110 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

frankly to rest upon its own attractions, and wliicli 
repudiates all such epithets as worse or better. This 
will at once show us not only of what various de- 
velopments the passion of love is capable, but also 
how false it is to imagine that the highest kind 
need naturally be the most attractive. 

I have quoted Othello, and Mrs. Craven's heroine 
as types of love when religionized. We will go to 
the modern Parisian school for the type of love 
when dereligionized — a school which, starting from 
the same premisses as do the positive moralists, yet 
come to a practical teaching that is singularly differ- 
ent. And let us remember that just as the ideal we 
have been considering already, is the ideal most ar- 
dently looked to by one part of the world, so is the 
ideal we are going to consider now, looked to with an 
equal ardour by another part of the world. The writ- 
er in particular from whom I am about to quote has 
been one of the most popular of all modern roman- 
cers ; and has been hailed by men of the most fastidi- 
ous culture as a preacher to these latter generations 
of a bolder and more worthy gospel. ' TTiis^^ ' says 
one of the best known of our living poets, of the work 
that I select to quote from — 

Tliis is the golden hook of spirit and sense, 
The holy icrit of beauty. 

' Mr. A. C. Swinburne. 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. \\\ 

Of tMs ^lioly wriV the chief theme is love. Let us 
go on to see how love is there iDresented to us. 

' Yoio Tcnoio,'^ says Theophile Gau tier's best-known 
hero, in a letter to a friend, ' you hnoio tJie eagerness 
with wliicJi IJiave sought for pTiysical heaicty, the 
importance I attach to outward form., and how the 
world I am in love with is the world that the eyes can 
see : or to put the matter in more conventional lan- 
guage, I am so corrupt and blase that my faith in 
moral beauty is gone, and my power of strimng af- 
ter it also. 1 have lost the faculty to discern between 
good and evil, and this loss has icell nigh brought 
me back to the ignorance of the child or savage. To 
tell the plain truth, nothing seems to me to be worthy 
either of praise or blame, and I am but little per- 
turbed by even the most abnormal actions. My con- 
science is deaf and dumb. Adultery seems to me the 
most commonplace tiling possible. I see nothing 
shocking in a young girl selling herself.'' . . . . 
' I find that the earth is all as fair as heaven, and vir- 
tue for me is nothing but the perfection of form.'' 
'■ Many a time and long,'' he continues farther on, 
' have I paused in some cathedral, under the shad- 
ow of the marble foliage, when the lights were quiv- 
ering in through the stained windows, when the 
organ unbidden made a low murmuring of itself, 
and the wind loas breathing amongst the pipes ; and 
I have plunged my gaze far into the pale blue depths 



112 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

of tJie almond- sliaped eyes of tlie Madonna. I Tiave 
followed with a tender reverence the curves of that 
wasted figure of hers, and the arch of her eyebrows^ 
just msihle and no more than that, I have admired 
her smooth and lustrous hrow, her temples with their 
transparent chastity, and her cheeks shaded with a 
sober virginal colour, more tender than the colour of 
a peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair 
and golden lashes that threw their tremulous shade 
upon it. I have traced out with care in the subdued 
tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines of her 
throat, so fragile and inclined so modestly. I have 
even lifted with an adventuring hand the folds of 
her tunic, and have seen unveiled that bosom, maid,- 
en and full of milk, that has never been pressed by 
any except divine lips. I have traced out the rare 
clear veins of it, even to their faintest branchings. 
I have laid my finger on it, to draw the white drops 
forth, of the draught of heaven. I have so much 
as touched with my lips the very bud of the rosa 
mystica. 

' Well, and I confess it honestly, all this imma- 
terial beauty, this thing so winged and so aerial 
that one Jcnoios well enough it is soon going to fly 
away from one, has never moved me to any great 
degree. I love the Venus Anadyomene better, better 
a thousand times. These old-world eyes, slightly 
raised at the corners! these lips so pure and so 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. II3 

firmly chiselled, so amorous, and so fit for Tcissing ! 
this low, hroad brow ! these tresses with the curxes 
in them of the sea water, and hound behind her 
head in a knot, negligently ! these firm and shining 
shoulders ! this hack, with its thousand alluring 
contours ! all these fair and rounded outlines, this 
air of su'perhuman mgoiir in a body so divinely 
feminine — all this enraptures and enchants me in 
a way of which you can have no idea — you the 
Christian and the philosoplier. 

' Mary, despite the humble air affected by her, is 
a dead too haughty for me. It is as much as her 
foot does, swathed in its white coverings, if it just 
touches the earth, now purpling where the old ser- 
pent writhes. Her eyes are the loveliest eyes in the 
world; but they are always turned heavenwards, 
or else they are cast down. They never look you 
straight in t?te face. They have never served as 
the mirror of a human form. . . . Venus comes 
from the sea to take possession of the world, as a 
goddess who loves men should — quite naked and 
quite alone. Earth is more to her liking than is 
Olympus, and amongst her lovers she has more men 
than gods. She drapes Tier self in no faint veils of 
mystery. She stands straight upright, her dolphin 
behind her, and her foot upon her opal-coloured 
shell. The sun striTces full upon her smooth limbs, 
and her white hand holds in air the waves of her 



114 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

fair locTcs, wliicli old father Ocean has sprinJcled 
with his most perfect pearls. One can see her. 
She hides nothing ; for modesty was only made for 
those loho have no beauty. It is an invention of 
the modern vjorld; the child of the Christian con- 
tempt for form and matter. 

' Oh ancient world ! all that you held in reverence 
is held in scorn hy us. Thine idols are overthrown 
in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in rags and 
tatters., martyrs with the Mood fresh on them., and 
their shoulders torn hy the tigers of thy circuses, 
have perched themselves on the pedestals of thy fair 
desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the whole 
iDorld in his winding-sheet. . . . Oh purity., plant 
of bitterness., born on a blood-soalced soil, and whose 
degenerate and sicTdy blossom expands loith diffi- 
culty in the danlc shade of cloisters, under a chill 
baptismal rain ; rose without scent, and spilled all 
round with thorns, thou hast taTcen the place for us 
of the glad and gracious roses, bathed loitli nard 
and wine, of the dancing girls of Sybaris ! 

' The ancient world Jcneio thee not, oh sterile 
flower ! thou wast never enwoven in its chaplets of 
delirious perfume. In that vigorous and healthy 
society they would have spurned thee under foot 
disdainfully. Purity, "mysticism, melanclioly — 
three words unknown to thee, three new maladies 
brought into our life by the Christ ! . . . For me. 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. US 

/ looTc on woman in the old world manner, like a fair 
slave, made only for our pleasures. Christianity, 
in my eyes, has done nothing to rehabilitate her. . . . 
To say the truth, 1 cannot conceive for what reason 
there should he this desire in woman to he looked on 
as on a level with men. . . . I have m.ade some love- 
verses in "my time, or at least something that aspired 
to pass for such . . . and there is not a vestige in 
them of the modern feeling of love. . . . There is 
nothing there, as in all the love-poetry since the 
Christian era, of a soul which, hecause it loves, hegs 
another soul to love it hack again; nothing there 
of a hlue and shining lake, which begs a stream to 
pour itself into its bosom, that both together they 
may mirror the stars of heaven ; nothing there of a 
pair of ring-doves, opening their wings together, that 
they may both together fly to the same nest.'"' 

Sucli is the account the hero gives of the nature 
of his love for woman. IN'or does he give this ac- 
count regretfully, or think that it shows him to be 
in any diseased condition. It shows rather a return, 
on his part, to a health that others have lost. As 
he looks round upon the modern world and the 
purity that George Eliot says in her verses she 
would die for, ' Woman,'' he exclaims mournfully, 
Hs become the symbol of moral and physical beau- 
ty. The real fall of man was on the birthday of 

* Mademoiselle de Maupin, pp. 313-333. Ed. Paris. 1875. 



116 IS LIFE WORTH LIVINO ? 

the dabe of BetJileTiem.^ ' It will be instructive to 
notice further that these views are carried out by 
him to their full legitimate consequences, even 
though this, to some degree, is against his will. 
'■ Sometimes ^^ he says, '/ try to persuade myself 
that such passions are ahominahle^ and I say as 
much to myself in as severe a way as I can. But 
the words come only from my lips. They are argu- 
m,ents that I malce. They are not arguments that I 
feel. The tiling in question really seems quite nat- 
ural to me, and anyone else in my place would., it 
seems to me, do as I do. ' ° 

Nor is this conception of love peculiar to the hero 
only. The heroine's conception is its exact counter- 
part, and exactly fits it. The heroine as completely 
as the hero has freed herself from any discernment 
between good and evil. She recoils from abnormal 
impurity no more than from normal, and the climax 
of the book is her full indulgence in both. 

Now here we have a specimen of love raised to in- 
tensity, but divested as far as possible of the relig- 
ious element. I say divested as far as i)Ossible, be- 
cause even here, as I shall prove hereafter, the pro- 
cess is not complete, and something of religion is 
still left fermenting. But it is quite complete enough 
for our present purpose. It will remind us in the 
sharpest and clearest way that love is no force which 

' Mademoiselle de Mauinn, p. 223. - Ibid., p. 225. 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 117 

is naturally constant in its development, or which, if 
left to itself can be in any way a moral director to 
us. It will show us that many of its developments 
are what the moralist calls abominable, and that the 
very worst of these may perhaps be the most at- 
tractive, and be deliberately presented to us as 
such by men of the most elaborate culture. We 
shall thus see that love as a test of conduct, as an 
aim of life, or as an object of any heroic devotion, 
is not love in general, but love of a special kind, and 
that to fulfil this function it must not only be 
selected from the rest, but also removed from them, 
and set above them at a quite incalculable distance. 
And the kind thus chosen, let me repeat again (for 
this, though less obvious, is more important still), 
is not chosen because it is naturally intense, but it 
becomes intense because it is the chosen one. 

Here then lies the weak point in the position of 
the positive moralists, when they hold up such love 
to us as so supreme a treasure in life. They observe, 
and quite correctly, that it is looked upon as a treas- 
ure ; but the source of its preciousness is something 
that their system expressly takes from it. That 
choice amongst the loves, so solemn and so imperious 
and yet so tender, which descends like a tongue of 
flame upon the love it delights to honour; which 
fixes on a despised and a weak affection, taking it 
like Elisha from his furrows, or like David from his 



118 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

pastures, setting it above all its fellows, and making 
it at once a queen and prophetess — this is a choice 
that positivism has no power to make ; or which, if 
it makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless pref- 
erence. It does not, indeed, confound pure love 
with impure, but it sets them on an equal footing ; 
and those who contend that the former under these 
conditions is intrinsically more attractive to men 
than the latter, betray a most naive ignorance of 
what human nature is. Supposing, for argument's 
sake, that to themselves it may be so, this fact is 
not of the slightest use to them. It is merely the 
possession on their part of a certain personal taste, 
which those who do not share it may regard as dis- 
ease or weakness, and which they themselves can 
neither defend nor inculcate. It is true they may 
call their opponents hard names if they choose ; 
but their opponents can call them hard names back 
again ; but in the absence of any common standard, 
the recriminations on neither side can have the least 
sting in them. Could, however, any argument on 
such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impu- 
rity that would have the strongest case ; for the 
pleasures of indulgence are admitted by both sides, 
while the merits of abstention are admitted by only 
one. 

Let us go back, for instance, in connection with 
this matter, to what Professor Huxley has told us is 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. I19 

the grand result of education. It leads us away, lie 
says, from ' the rank and steaming valleys of sense, ' 
up to tlie ' liigliest good,'' wliich is ' discerned^ hy 
reason,^ ''resting in eternal calm.'' And let us ask 
liim again, wliat, as uttered by a positivist, these 
words can by any possibility mean. ' The rank and 
steaming i^alleys of sense'' ! Why are they rank 
and steaming ? Or, if they are, why is that any con- 
demnation of them ? Or, if we do condemn them, what 
else are we to praise ? The entire raw material, not 
of our pleasures only, but of our knowledge also, is 
given us, say the positive school, by the senses. 
Surely then to condemn the senses must be to con- 
demn life. Let us imagine Professor Huxley talk- 
ing in this way to Theophile Gautier. Let us ima- 
gine him frowning grimly at the licentious French- 
man, and urging him with all vehemence to turn to 
the highest good. The answer will at once be, ' That 
is exactly, my dear Professor, what I do turn to. 
And, listen,^ he might say — the following is again a 
passage from his own writings — ''to the way in 
which I figure the highest good to myself. It is a 
huge huilding, with its outer walls all blind and 
windowless ; a huge court within, surrounded hy a 
colonnade of white marble / in the midst a musical 
fountain with a jet of quicTc-siltier in the Arabian 
fashion ; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates 
jplaced alternately ; overhead the bluest of skies and 



120 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

the mellowest of suns ; great long-nosed greyhounds 
should he sleeping here and there ; from time to time 
harefoot negr esses with golden aiikle -rings, fair 
women servants white and slender, and clad in rich 
strange garments, should pass heticeen the hollow 
arches, hasJiet on arm, or urn poised on head. ' Three 
things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple — 
brilliance, mass, and colour. These are the stuffs 
out of lohicli my dreams are made ; and all my 
ideal palaces are constructed of these materials.'"' 
What answer could Professor Huxley make to this 
that would not seem to the other at once barbarous 
and nonsensical ? The best answer he could make 
would be simply, '/ do not agree with you.^ 
And to this again the answer w^ould at once be, 
' That is because you are still hampered by preju- 
dices, whose only possible foundations loe have both 
removed / and because I am a man of culture, and 
you are not.'' 

Let us also consider again that other utterance of 
Professor Huxley's, with which I began this chap- 
ter. According to the positive view of morals, he 
says, those special sets of happiness that a moral 
system selects for us, have no more to do vrith any 
theory as to the reason of their selection, than a 
man's sight has to do with his theory of vision, or 
than the hot taste of ginger has to do with a knowl- 

' 3Iademoiselle de Maupin, p. 322. "^ Hid., p. 211. • 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 121 

edge of its analysis. That is a most clear and suc- 
cinct statement of the whole positive position ; and 
we shall now be able to profit by its clearness, and 
to see how all that it does is to reveal confusion. In 
the first place, Professor Huxley's comparisons 
really illustrate the very fact that he designs them 
to invalidate. It is precisely on his theory of vision 
that a man's sight practically does depend. All 
sight, so far as it conveys any meaning to him, is an 
act of inference ; and though generally this process 
m.ay be so rapid that it is not perceived by him, yet 
the doubt often felt about distant or unusual objects 
will make him keenly conscious of it. Whilst as to 
ginger and the taste produced by it, the moral ques- 
tion is not whether it is hot or not ; but whether or 
no it will be for our advantage to eat it ; and this 
resolves itself into two further questions ; firstly, 
whether its heat is pleasant, and secondly whether 
its heat is wholesome. On the first of these Profes- 
sor Huxley throws no light whatever ; whilst as to 
the second, it really hangs entirely on the very point 
that he cited as indifferent. We must have some 
knowledge, even though it be only vague and nega- 
tive, of the nature of a food, before we know whether 
it will be well for us in the long run to habitually 
eat it, or to abstain from it. 

Let us apply this illustration to love. Professor 
Huxley' s ginger shall stand for the sort of love he 



122 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

would most approve of ; and love, as a whole, will 
be represented by a varied dessert, of wMch ginger 
is one of the dishes. JN'ow what Professor Huxley 
has to do is to recommend this ginger, and to show 
that it is divided by an infinite gulf — say from prunes 
or from Huntley and Palmer's biscuits. But how is 
he to do this ? To say that ginger is hot is to say 
nothing. To many, that may condemn instead of 
recommending it : and they will have as much to 
say for their own tastes if they rejoin that prunes 
and biscuits are sweet. If he can prove to them 
that what they choose is unwholesome, and that 
if they eat it they will be too unwell to say their 
prayers, then, supposing they want to say their 
prayers, he will have gained his point. But if he 
cannot prove that it is unwholesome, or if his friends 
have no prayers to say, his entire recommendation 
dwindles to a declaration of his own personal taste. 
But in this case his whole tone will be different. 
There will be nothing in it of the moral imperative. 
He will be only laughed at and not listened to, if he 
proclaims his own taste in sweetmeats with all the 
thunders of Sinai. And the choice between the va- 
rious kinds of love is, on positive principles, only a 
choice between sweetmeats. It is this, and nothing 
more, than this, avowedly ; and yet the positivists 
would keep for it the earnest language of the Chris- 
tian, for whom it is a choice, not between sweetmeats 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 123 

and sweetmeats, but between a confectioner's wafer 
and the Host. 

It may perhaps be nrged by some that, according 
to this view of it, purity is degraded into a bitter 
something, which we only accept reluctantly, through 
fear of the consequences of its alternatives. And it 
is quite true that a fear of the consequences of wrong 
love is inseparably connected with our sense of the 
value of right love. But this is a necessity of the 
case ; the quality of the right love is in no way 
lowered by it, and it will lead us to consider an- 
other important point. 

It is impossible to hold that one thing is incalcu- 
bly better than others, without holding also that 
others are incalculably worse than it. Indeed, the 
surest test we can give of the praise we bestow on 
what we choose, is the measure of condemnation we 
bestow on what we reject. If we maintain that vir- 
tuous love constitutes its own heaven, we must also 
maintain that vicious love constitutes its own hell. 
If we cannot do the last we certainly cannot do the 
first. And the positive school can do neither. It 
can neither elevate one kind of love nor depress the 
others ; and for this reason. The results of love in 
both cases are, according to their teaching, bounded 
by our present consciousness ; and our present con- 
sciousness, divorced from all future expectation, has 
no room in it for so vast an interval as all moral sys- 



124 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVINGS 

terns postulate between the right love and tlie wrong. 
Indeed, if happiness be the test of right, it cannot, 
as a general truth, be said that they are practically 
separable at all. It is notorious that, as far as the 
present life goes, a man of even the vilest affections 
may effectually elude all j)ain from them. Some- 
times they may injure his health, it is true ; but 
they need not even do that ; and if they do, it 
necessitates no moral condemnation of them, for 
many heroic labours would do just the same. In- 
jury to the health, at any rate, is a mere accident ; 
so is also injury to the reputation ; and conditions 
are easily conceivable by which both these dangers 
would be obviated. The supposed evils of impurity 
have but a very slight reference to these. They de- 
pend, not on any present consciousness, but on the 
expectations of a futare consciousness — a conscious- 
ness that will reveal things to us hereafter which we 
can only augur here. 

I do not know them now, l)ut after death 
God knows Iknoic the faces I shall see: 
Each one a murdered self with last loic breath, 
' I am thyself ; tchat hast thou done to me 1 ' 
' And I, and I thyself ! ' lo each one saith, 
' And thou thyself, to all eternity.' ' 

Such is the expectation on which the supposed evils 

' Dante Gabriel Rosetti. 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 125 

of impurity depend. According to positive princi- 
ples, tlie expectation will never be fulfilled ; the 
evils therefore exist only in a diseased imagination. 

And with, the beauty of purity the case is just the 
same. According to the view which the positivists 
have adopted, so little counting the cost of it, a pure 
human affection is a union of two things. It is not 
a possession only, but a promise ; not a sentiment 
only, but a ^re-sentiment ; not a taste only, but a 
foretaste ; and the chief sweetness said to be found 
in the former, is dependent altogether upon the latter. 
' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God,'' is the belief which, whether true or false as a 
fact, is implied in the whole modern cultus of love, 
and the religious reverence with which it has come 
to be regarded. In no other way can we explain 
either its eclecticism or its supreme importance. 
Nor is the belief in question a thing that is implied 
only. Continually it is expressed also, and this 
even by writers who theoretically repudiate it. 
Goethe, for instance, cannot present the moral as- 
pects of Margaret's love-story without assuming it. 
And George Eliot has been obliged to pre-suppose 
it in her characters, and to exhibit the virtues she 
regards as noblest, on the pedestal of a belief that 
she regards as most irrational. But its completest 
expression is naturally to be found elsewhere. Here, 
for instance, is a verse of Mr. Robert Browning's, 



126 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

who, however we rank him otherwise, is perhaps un- 
rivalled for his subtle analysis of the emotions : 

Dear, when our one soul understands 
The great soul that makes all things neto, 

When earth breaks up, and heaven expands, 
How will the change strike me and you. 

In the house not made xcith hands ? 

Here, again, is another, in which the same sentiment 
is presented in a somewhat different form : 

Is there nought better than to enjoy ? 
No deed which done, will raake time breaks 

Letting us pent-up creatures through 

Into eternity, our due — 
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ ? 

No wise beginning, here and now. 

Which cannot grow complete {earth' s feat) 

And heaven must finish there and then? 

No tasting earth's true food for men. 
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet ? 

To the last of these verses a singular parallel may 
be found in the works of a much earlier, and a very 
different writer, only the affection there dealt with 
is filial and not marital. In spite of this difference, 
however, it will still be much in point. 

' The day ivas fast approaching,' says Augustine, 
* whereon my mother luas to depart this life, ivhen it hap- 
pened, Lord, as I believe by thy spiecial ordinance, that she 
and I were alone together, leaning in a certain window thai 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 127 

looked into the garden of the house, ivhere we were then stay- 
ing at Ostia. We were talldng together alone, very sweetly, 
and were wo7idering ivhat the life icould he of God's saints in 
heaven. And when our disco urse was come to that point, that 
the highest delight and brightest of aU the carnal senses seemed 
not fit to he so much as named luith that life's sweetness, we, 
lifting ourselves yet more ardently to the Unchanging One, 
did hy degrees pass through all things hodily — heyond the 
heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, ive soared higher 
yet hy imvard musing. We came to our own minds, and we 
passed heyond them, that we might reach that place of 
plenty, where Thoufeedest Israel for ever with the food of 
truth, and loliere life is the Wisdom hy tvhich all these 
things are made. And whilst loe loere discoursing and 
panting after her, ive slightly touched on her ivith the whole 
effort of our heart ; and we sighed, and there left hound tlie 
first fruits of the spirit, and came hack again to the sounds 
of our oivn mouths — to our own finite language. And 
ivhat ive tlien said was in this tvise : If to any the tumult of 
thefiesh ivere hushed, hushed the images of the earth and air 
and ivaters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the very soul 
he hushed to herself, and hy not thinking on self transcend 
self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every 
tongue and every sign, and whatever exists only in transition 
■ — if these should all he hushed, having only roused our ears 
to Him that made them, and He speak alone, not hy them 
hut hy Himself, that ive might hear His word, not through 
any tongue offiesh, nor angeVs voice, nor sound of thunder, 



128 -ZS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, hut might hear Sim 
whom in these things we love — His very self tvitJiout any aid 
from these (even as ive two for that brief moment had touched 
the eternal Wisdom) — could this he continued on, and other 
visions, far unlike it, he loithdraivn, and this one ravish and 
absorh and wi^ap up its heholders amid these inward joys, so 
that life might he for ever like that one moment of under- 
standing, were not this. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord? 
And when shall that he ? Shall it he when we rise again, 
hut shall not all he changed ? ' ' 

In this exceedingly striking passage we have the 
whole case before us. The belief on which modern 
love rests, and which makes it so single and so 
sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an enlarged 
scale : and we see that it is a belief to which posi- 
tivism has no right. The belief, indeed, is by no 
means a modern thing. Rudiments of it on the con- 
trary are as old as man himself, and may represent 
a something that inheres in his very nature. But 
none the more for this will it be of any service to the 
positivist ; for this something can only be of power 
or value if the prophecy it inevitably developes into 
be regarded as a true one. In the consciousness of 
the ancient world it lay undeciphered like the dark 
sentence of an oracle ; and though it might be re- 

' Aug. Conf. , lib. ix. In the earlier part of the passage the extreme 
redundancy of the original has been curtailed somewhat. In the ren- 
dering here given I have to a great extent followed Dr. Pusey. 



LOVE A8 A TEST OF GOODNESS. 129 

vered by some, it could not be denied by any. But 
its meaning is now translated for us, and there is a 
new factor in the case. We now can deny it ; and 
if we do, its whole power is paralysed. 

This when once recognised must be evident enough. 
But a curious confusion of thought has prevented 
the positive school from seeing it. They have im- 
agined that what religion adds to love is the hope 
of prolongation only, not of development also ; and 
thus we find Professor Huxley curtly dismissing the 
question by saying that the quality of such a pleas- 
ure ' is obmously in no way affected hy the ahhrevia- 
tion or prolongation of our conscious life.'' How 
utterly this is beside the point may be shown in- 
stantly by a very simple example. A painter, we 
will say, inspired with some great conception, sets 
to work at a picture, and finds a week of the in- 
tensest happiness in preparing his canvas and laying 
Ms first colours. Now the happiness of that week 
is, of course, a fact for him. It would not have been 
greater had it lasted a whole fortnight ; and it would 
not have been less had he died at the week's end. 
But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it 
in no way depends on its prolongation, what it does 
depend on is the belief that it will be prolonged, and 
that in being prolonged it will change its character. 
It depends on the belief on the painter' s part that he 
will be able to continue his painting, and that as he 
9 



130 J^S LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

continues it, liis picture will advance to comjjletion. 
The positivists have confused the true saying that 
the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend 
on the fact that we shall paint many, with the false 
saying that the pleasure of beginning that one does 
not depend on the belief that we shall finish it. On 
this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does de- 
pend, largely if not entirely ; and it is precisely this 
last belief that positivism takes away. 

To return again, then, to the subject of human 
love — we are now in a position to see that, as offered 
us at present by the positive school of moralists, it 
cannot, properly speaking, be called a positive pleas- 
ure at all, but that, it is still essentially a religious 
one ; and that when the religious element is eradi- 
cated, its entire character will change. It may be, 
of course, contended that the religious element is in- 
eradicable : but this is simply either to call positiv- 
ism an impossibility, or religion an incUrable dis- 
ease. Here, however, we are touching on a side 
issue, which I shall by and by return to, but which 
is at present beside the point. My aim now is not 
to argue either that positivism can or cannot be 
accepted by humanity, but to show what, if ac- 
cepted, it will have to offer us. I wish to point out 
the error, for instance, of such writers as George 
Eliot, who, whilst denying the existence of any sun- 
god in the heavens, are yet perpetually adoring the 
sunlight on the earth ; who profess to extinguish all 



LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS. 131 

fire on principle, and then ofi'er us boiling water to 
supply its place ; or who, sending love to us as a 
mere Cassandra, continue to quote as Scripture the 
prophecies they have just discredited. 

Thus far what we have seen is this. Love as a 
positive pleasure, if it be ever reduced to such, will 
be a very different thing from what our positivist 
moralists at present see it to be. It will perform 
none of those functions for which they now look to 
it. It will no longer supply them, as now, with any 
special pinnacle on which human life may raise it- 
self. The one type of it that is at present on an 
eminence will sink to the same level as the others. 
All these will be offered to us indiscriminately, and 
our choice between them will have no moral value. 
None of the ethical epithets by which these varieties 
are at present so sharply distinguished from each 
other will have any virtue left in them. Morality in 
this connection will be a word without a meaning. 

I have as yet dealt only with one of those re- 
sources, which have been supposed to impart to life 
a XDOsitive general value. This one, however, has 
been the most important and the most comprehen- 
sive of all ; and its case will explain that of the 
others, and perhaps, with but few exceptions, in- 
clude them. One or two of these others I shall by 
and by treat separately ; but we will first enquire 
into the results on life of the change we have been 
considering already. 



CHAPTER YI. 

LIFE AS ITS OWISr EEWAED. 

' If in tins life only we have hope ' 

What we have now before us is a certain subtrac- 
tion sum. We have to take from life one of its 
strongest present elements ; and see as well as we 
can what will then be the remainder. An exact an- 
swer we shall, of course, not expect ; but we can 
arrive at an approximate one without much diffi- 
culty. 

What we have to subtract has been shown in the 
previous chapter ; but it may again be described 
briefly in the following way. Life in its present 
state, as we have just seen, is a union of tAvo sets 
of feelings, and of two kinds of happiness, and is 
partly the sum of the two, and partly a compromise 
between them. Its resources, by one classification, 
are separable into two groups, according as in them- 
selves they chance to repel or please us ; and the 
most obvious measure of happiness would seem to 
be nothing more than our gain of what is thus pleas- 
ant, and our shirking of what is thus painful. But 
if we examine life as it actually exists about us, we 

132 



LIFE AS ITS OWW REWARD. 133 

shall see that this classification has been traversed 
by another. Many things natn rally repellent have 
received a supernatural blessing ; many things nat- 
urally pleasant have received a supernatural curse ; 
and thus our highest happiness is often composed of 
pain, and our profoundest misery is nearly always 
based on pleasure. Accordingly, whereas happiness 
naturally would seem the test of right, right has 
come supernaturally to be the test of hajppiness. 
And so completely is this notion engrained in the 
world' s consciousness, that in all our deeper views 
of life, no matter whether we be saints or sinners, 
right and wrong are the things that first appeal to 
us, not happiness and misery. A certain supernat- 
ural moral judgment, in fact, has become a primary 
faculty with us, and it mixes with every estimate we 
form of the world around us. 

It is this faculty that positivism, if accepted fully, 
must either destroy or paralyse ; it is this, therefore, 
that in imagination we must now try to eliminate. 
To do this — to see what will be left in life to us, with- 
out this faculty, we must first see in general, how 
much is at present dependent on it. 

This might at first sight seem a hard task to per- 
form ; the interests we shall have to deal with are so 
many and so various. But the difficulty may be 
eluded. I have already gone to literature for ex- 
amples of special feelings on the part of individuals. 



134 J'8 LIFE WOBTE LIVING f 

and under certain circumstances. We will now go 
to it for a kindred, though, not for the same assist- 
ance ; and for this end we shall approach it in a 
slightly different way. What we did before was 
this. We took certain works of literary art, and 
selecting, as it were, one or two special patches of 
colour, we analysed the composition of these. What 
we shall now do will be to take the pictures as organic 
wholes, with a view to analysing the effect of them 
as pictures — the harmony or the contrast of their 
colours, and the massing of their lights and shadows. 
If we reflect for a moment what art is — literary and 
poetical art in particular — we shall at once see how, 
examined in this way, it will be of use to us. In the 
first place, then, what is art ? and what is the reason 
that it pleases us ? It is a reflection, a reproduction 
of the pleasures of life, and is altogether relative to 
these, and dependent on them. We should, for in- 
stance, take no interest in portraits unless we took 
some interest in the human face. We should take 
none in statues if we took none in the human form. 
We must know something of love as a feeling, or we 
should never care for love-songs. Art may send us 
back to these with intenser appreciation of them, but 
we must bring to art from life the appreciation we 
want intensifled. Art is a factor in common human 
happiness, because by its means common men are 
made partakers in the vision of uncommon men. 



LIFE AS ITS OWN REWABD. 135 

Great art is a speculum reflecting life as tlie keenest 
eyes have seen it. All its forms and imagery are of 
value only as this. Taken by themselves, ' the best in 
this Mnd are hut shadoiDS.^ We have to '■piece out 
their imperfections, with our thoughts ;'' ''imagina- 
tion has to amend them,'' and ' it must he our imagin- 
ation, not theirs.'' ' In examining a work of art, then, 
we are examining life itself ; or rather, in examining 
the interest which we take in a work of art, in exam- 
ining the reasons why we think it beautiful, or great, 
or interesting, we are examining our own feelings as 
to the realities represented by it. 

And now remembering this, let us turn to certain 
of the world's greatest works of art — I mean its 
dramas : for just as poetry is the most articulate of 
all the arts, so is the drama the most comprehensive 
form of poetry. In the drama we have the very 
thing we are now in want of. We have life as a 
whole — that complex aggregate of details, which 
forms, as it were, the mental landscape of existence, 
presented to us in a ''questionable sliape,'' at once 
concentrated and intensified. And it is no exagger- 
ation to say that the reasons why men think life worth 

' ' Hippolyta. — This is the silliest stuff I ever heard. Theseus. — Tlie 
best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst no worse, if imagination 
amend them. Hippolyta. — It must be your imagination then, not theirs.' 
— Midsummer's Night's Dream, Act V. 

' Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts. ' — Prologue to 
Henry V. 



136 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

living, can be all found in the reasons why they think 
a great drama great. 

Let us turn, then, to some of the greatest works of 
Sophocles, of Shakespeare, and of Goethe, and con- 
sider briefly how these present life to us. Let us 
take Macbeth, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, and 
Faust. We have here five presentations of life, 
under what confessedly are its most striking aspects, 
and with such interests as men have been able to 
find in it, raised to their greatest intensity. Such, at 
least, is the way in which these works are regarded, 
and it is only in virtue of this estimate that they are 
called great. Now, in producing this estimate, what 
is the chief faculty in us that they appeal to ? It 
will need but little thought to show us that they 
appeal primarily to the supernatural moral judg- 
ment ; that this judgment is perpetually being ex- 
pressed explicitly in the works themselves ; and, 
which is far more important, that it is always pre- 
supposed in us. Li other words, these supreme pres- 
entations of life are presentations of men struggling, 
or failing to struggle, not after natural happiness, 
but after supernatural right ; and it is always pre- 
supposed on our part that we admit this struggle to 
be the one important thing. And this importance, we 
shall see further, is based, not on the external and the 
social consequences of conduct, but essentially and 
primarily on its internal and its personal consequences. 



LIFE AS ITS OTFiV REWARD. 137 

In Ifacbeth, for instance, the main incident, the 
tragic -colonring matter of the drama, is the murder 
of Duncan. But in what aspect of this does the real 
tragedy lie? Not in the fact that Duncan is mur- 
dered, but in the fact that Macbeth is the murderer. 
What appals us, what purges our passions with pity 
and with terror as we contemplate it, is not the ex- 
ternal, the social effect of the act, but the personal, 
the internal effect of it. As for Duncan, he is in his 
grave ; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well. What 
our minds are made to dwell upon is not that Duncan 
shall sleep for ever, but that Macbeth shall sleep no 
more ; it is not the extinction of a dynasty, but the 
ruin of a character. 

We see in Hamlet precisely the same thing. The 
action there that our interest centres in, is the hero's 
struggle to conform to an internal personal standard 
of right, utterly irrespective of use to others, or of 
natural happiness to himself. In the course of this 
struggle, indeed, he does nothing but ruin the happi- 
ness around him ; and this ruin adds greatly to the 
pathos of the spectacle. But we are not indignant 
with Hamlet, as being the cause of it. We should 
have been indignant rather with him if the case had 
been reversed, and if, instead of sacrificing social 
happiness for the sake of personal right, he had sac- 
rificed personal right for the sake of social happiness. 

In Antigone the case is just the same, only there 



138 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

its nature is yet more distinctly exhibited. We have 
for the central interest the same personal struggle 
after right, not after use or happiness ; and one of 
the finest passages in that whole marvellous drama 
is a distinct statement by the heroine that this is so. 
The one rule she says, that she is resolved to live by, 
and not live by only, but if needs be to die for, is no 
human rule, is no standard of man' s devising, nor can 
it be modified to suit our changing needs ; but it is 

TJie unwritten and the enduring laws of God, 
Which are not of to-day nor yesterday. 
But live from everlasting, and none breathes 
Who knows them, whence begotten. 

In Measure for Measure and Faust we can see the 
matter reduced to a narrower issue still. In both 
these plays we can see at once that one moral judg- 
ment at least, not to name others, is before all things 
presupposed in us. This is a hard and fixed judg- 
ment with regard to female chastity, and the super- 
natural value of it. It is only because we assent to 
this judgment that Isabella is heroic to us ; and pri- 
marily for the same reason that Margaret is unfortu- 
nate. Let us suspend this judgment for a moment, 
and what will become of these two dramas % The ter- 
ror and the pity of them will vanish instantly like a 
dream. The fittest name for both of them will be 
'•Much Ado about Nothing.'' 

It will thus be seen, and the more we consider the 



LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. 139 

matter tlie more plain will it become to ns — tliat in 
all such art as that which we have been now consid- 
ering, the premiss on which all its power and great- 
ness rests is this : The grand relation of man is not 
first to his brother men, but to something else, that 
is beyond humanity — that is at once without and al- 
so beyond liimseK ; to this first, and to his brother 
men through this. We are not our own ; we are 
bought with a price. Our bodies are God's temples, 
and the joy and the terror of life depends on our 
keeping these temples pure, or defiling them. Such 
are the solemn and profound beliefs, whether con- 
scious or unconscious, on which all the higher art of 
the world has based itself. All the profundity and 
solemnity of it is borrowed from these, and exists 
for us in exact proportion to the intensity with which 
we hold them. 

Nor is this true of sublime and serious art only. It 
is true of cynical, profiigate, and concupiscent art as 
well. It is true of Congreve as it is true of Sopho- 
cles ; it is true of Mademoiselle de Maupin as it is 
true of Measure for Measure. This art differs from 
the former in that the end presented in it as the ob- 
ject of struggle is not only not the morally right, but 
is also to a certain extent essentially the morally 
wrong. In the case of cynical and profiigate art this 
is obvious. For such art does not so much depend 
on the substitution of some new object, as in putting 



140 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVmG? 

insult on the present one. It does not make right 
and wrong change places ; on the contrary it careful- 
ly keeps them where they are ; but it insults the for- 
mer by transferring its insignia to the latter. It is 
not the ignoring of the right, but the denial of it. 
Cynicism and profligacy are essentially the spirits 
that deny, but they must retain the existing affirma- 
tions for their denial to prey upon. Their function 
is not to destroy the good, but to keep it in lingering 
torture. It is a kind of spiritual bear-baiting. They 
hate the good, and its existence piques them ; but 
they must know that the good exists none the less. 
'- 1- d no sooner,'' says one of Congreve's characters, 
[play with a man that slighted Ms ill-fortune, than 
P d malie love to a woman who undervalued the loss 
of Iter reputation. ' In this one sentence is contained 
the whole secret of jorofligacy ; and profligacy is the 
same as cynicism, only it is cynicism sensualized. 
IsTow we have in the above sentence the exact coun- 
terpart to the words of Antigone that I have already 
quoted. For just as her life lay in conformity to 
' The unwritten, and the enduring laios of God,'' so 
does the life of the profligate lie in the violation of 
them. To each the existence of laws is equally es- 
sential. For profligacy is not merely the gratifica- 
tion of the appetites, but ih.Q gratification of them at 
the expense of something else. Beasts are not profli- 
gate. We cannot have a profligate goat. 



LIFE A8 ITS OWN BEWABD. 141 

In what I have called concupiscent art, the case 
might seem different, and to a certain extent it is so. 
The objects of struggle that we are there presented 
with are meant to be presented as pleasures, not in 
defiance of right and wrong, but independently of 
them. The chief of these, indeed, as Theophile Gau- 
tier has told us, are the physical endearments of a 
man and a woman, with no other qualification than 
that they are both of them young and beautiful. But 
though this art professes to be thus independent of 
the moral judgment, and to trust for none of its ef- 
fects to the discernment between good and evil, this 
really is very far from being the case. Let us turn 
once again to the romance we have already quoted 
from. The hero says, as we have seen already, that 
he has completely lost the power of discernment in 
question. Now, even this, as might be shown easily, 
is not entirely true ; for argument' s sake, however, we 
may grant him that it is so. The real point in the mat- 
ter to notice is that he is at any rate conscious of the 
loss. He is a man tingling with the excitement of hav- 
ing cast off some burden. The burden may be gone, but 
it is still present in the sharp effects of its absence. 
He is a kind of moral poacher, who, though he may 
not live by law, takes much of his life' s tone from the 
sense that he is eluding it. His pleasures, though plea- 
surable in themselves, yet have this quality height- 
ened by the sense of contrast. ' / am at any rate 



142 i® LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

not mrtuous,'' his mistress says to Mm, ^ and that 
is always something gained,^ George Eliot says 
of Maggie TiiUiver, that she liked her aunt Pul- 
let chiefly because she was not her aunt Gleg. 
Theophile Gantier's hero likes the Venus Anadyo- 
mene, partly at least, because she is not the Ma- 
donna. 

Nay, let us even descend to worse spectacles — ^to 
the sight of men struggling for enjoyments that are 
yet more obviously material, more devoid yet of any 
trace of mind or morals, and we shall see plainly, if 
we consult the mirror of art, that the moral element 
is present even here. We shall trace it even in such 
abnormal literature of indulgence as the erotic work 
commonly ascribed to Meursius. We shall trace it 
in the orgies of Tiberius at Capri ; or of Quartilla, as 
Petronius describes them, at Neapolis. It is like a 
ray of light coming in at the top of a dark cavern, 
whose inmates see not it, but hy it ; and which only 
brings to them a consciousness of shadow. It is this 
supernatural element that leavens natural passion, 
and gives its mad rage to it. It creates for it ' a twi- 
light where mrtues are mces? The pleasures thus 
sought for are supposed to enthral men not in pro- 
portion to their intensity (for this through all their 
varieties would be probably nearly equal) but in 
proportion to their lowness — to their sullying power. 
Degradation is the measure of enjoyment ; or rather 



LIFE AS ITS OWIf REWARD. 143 

it is an increasing numeral by which one constant 
fignre of enjoyment is multiplied. 

Ah, where shall we go then, for pastime. 
If the worst that can he has teen done? 

This is the great question of the votaries of such joys 
as these.' 

Thus if we look at life in the mirror of art, we shall 
see how the supernatural is ever present to us. If 
we climb up into heaven it is there ; if we go down 
into hell it is there also. We shall see it at the bot- 
tom of those two opposite sets of pleasures, to the 
one or the other of which all human pleasures be- 
long. The source of one is an impassioned struggle 
after the supernatural right, or an impassioned 
sense of rest upon attaining it ; the source of the 
other is the sense of revolt against it, which in vari- 
ous ways flatters or excites us. In both cases the 
supernatural moral judgment is the sense appealed 
to, primarily in the first case, and secondarily if not 
primarily in the second. All the life about us is 
coloured by this, and naturally if this be destroyed 
or wrecked, the whole aspect of life will change for 
us. What then will this change be 1 Looking stiU 
into the mirror of art, the general character of it will 

' Seneca says of virtue, ' Non quia delectat plaaet, sed quia placet 
delectat.' Of vice in the same way we may say, ' Non quia delectat 
pudet, sed quia pudet delectat' 



144 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

be very readily perceptible. I noticed just now, in 
passing, liow Measure for Measure and Faust wonld 
suffer in tlieir meaning and tbeir interest, by the ab- 
sence on our part of a certain moral judgment. They 
would become like a person singing to a deaf audi- 
ence — a series of dumb grimaces with no meaning in 
them. The same thing is equally true in all the 
other cases. Antigone' s heroism will evaporate ; ' 
she will be left obstinate only. The lives of Macbeth 
and Hamlet will be tales of little meaning for us, 
though the words are strong. They will be full of 
sound and fury, but they will signify nothing. 
What they produce in us will be not interest but a 
kind of wondering weariness — weariness at the 
weary fate of men who could ' tTiirik so 'brainsickly 
of things.'' So in like manner will all the emphasis 
and elaboration in the literature of sensuality be- 
come a weariness without lAeaning, also. Congreve' s 
caustic wit will turn to spasmodic truism ; and Theo- 
phile Gautier's excess of erotic ardour, into prolix 
and fantastic affectation. All its sublimity, its bril- 
liance, and a large part of its interest, ctepend in art 
on the existence of the moral sense, and would in its 
absence be absolutely unproducible. The reason of 
this is plain. The natural pains and pleasures of 

' It will be of course recollected that in this abstraction of the 
moral sense, we have to abstract it from the characters as well as 
ourselves. 



LIFE AS ITS OTFiV^ BEWABD. 145 

life, merely manipulated by tL e imagination and the 
memory, have too little variety or magnitude in 
them without further aid. Art without the moral 
sense to play upon, is like a pianist whose key- 
board is reduced to a single octave. 

And exactly the same will be the case with life. 
Life will lose just the same qualities that art will — 
neither more nor less. There will be no introduction 
of any new interests, but merely the elimination of 
certain existing ones. The subtraction of the moral 
sense will not revolutionise human purposes, but 
simi3ly make them listless. It will reduce to a parti- 
coloured level the whole field of pains and pleasures. 
The moral element gives this level a new dimension. 
Working underneath it as a subterranean force, it 
convulses and divides its surface. Here vast areas 
subside into valleys and deep abysses ; there moun- 
tain peaks shoot up heavenwards. Mysterious shad- 
ows begin to throng the hollows ; new tints and 
half -tints flicker and shift everywhere ; mists hang 
floating over ravines and precipices ; the vegetation 
grows more various, here slenderer, there richer and 
more luxuriant ; whilst high over all, bright on the 
topmost summits, is a new strange something — the 
white snows of purity, catching the morning streaks 
on them of a brighter day, that has never as yet 
risen upon the world below. 

With the subtraction, or nullifying, of the moral 
10 



146 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

force, all this will go. The mountains will sink, the 
valleys be filled up ; all will be once more dead level 
— still indeed parti-coloured, but without light and 
shadow, and with the colours reduced in number, 
and robbed of all their vividness. The chiaro-oscuro 
will have gone from life ; the moral landscape, whose 
beauty and grandeur is at present so much extolled, 
will have dissolved like an insubstantial pageant. 
Vice and virtue will be set before us in the same grey 
light ; every deeper feeling either of joy or sorrow, 
of desire or of repulsion, will lose its vigour, and 
cease any more to be resonant. 

It may be said indeed, and very truly, that under 
favourable circumstances there must always remain 
a Joy in the mere act of living, in the exercising of 
the bodily functions, and in the exciting and appeas- 
ing of the bodily appetites. Will anything, it may 
be asked, for instance, rob the sunshine of its glad- 
ness, or deaden the vital influence of a spring morn- 
ing ? — when the sky is a cloudless blue, and the sea 
is like a wild hyacinth, when the pouring brooks 
seem to live as they sparkle, and the early air 
amongst the woodlands has the breath in it of un- 
seen violets ? All this, it is quite true, will be left 
to us ; this and a great deal more. This, however, 
is but one side of the picture. If life has its own 
natural gladness which is expressed by spring, it 
lias also its own natural sadness which is expressed 



LIFE AS ITS OWJ^ REWARD. 147 

by winter ; and the worth, of life, if this is all we 
trust to, will be as various and as changing as the 
weather is. But this is not all. Even this worth, 
such as it is, depends for us at present, in a large 
measure, upon religion — not directly indeed, but in- 
directly. This life of air, and nerve, and muscle, 
this buoyant consciousness of joyous and abounding 
health, which seems so little to have connection with 
faiths or theories, is for us impregnated with a life 
that is imjDregnated with these, and thus their subtle 
influence pervades it everywhere. There is no im- 
pulse from without which stirs or excites the senses, 
that does not either bring to us, or send us on to, a 
sometliing beyond itself. In each of these pleasures 
that seems to us so simple, floats a swarm of hopes 
and memories, like the gnats in a summer twilight. 
There is not a sight, a sound, a smell, not a breath 
from sea or garden, that is not full of them, and on 
which, busy and numberless, they are not wafted into 
us. And each of these volatile presences brings the 
notions of right and wrong with it ; and it is these 
that make sensuous life tingle with so strange and 
so elaborate an excitement. Indirectly then, though 
not directly, the mere Joy in the act of living will 
suffer from the loss of religion, in the same manner, 
though perhaps not in the same degree, as the other 
joys will. It will not lose its existence, but it will 
lose zest. The fabric of its pleasures will of course 



148 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

remain what it ever was ; but its brightest inhabit- 
ants will have left it. It will be as desolate as May- 
fair in September, or as a deserted college during a 
long vacation. 

We may here pause in passing, to remark on the 
shallowness of that philosophy of culture, to be met 
with in certain quarters, which, whilst admitting all 
that can be said as to the destruction for us of any 
moral obligation, yet advises us still to profit by the 
variety of moral distinctions. '■ EacJi moment,'' says 
Mr. Pater for instance, ' some form grows perfect in 
hand or face ; some tone on the hills or sea is choicer 
than the rest / some mood of passion or insight or 
intellectual excitement, is irresistibly real and at- 
tractme for iis.^ And thus, he adds, ' while all melts 
under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite 
passion, or any contribution to knowledge, that 
seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a 
moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, 
strange flowers, and curious odours, or the work of 
the artist's hand, or the face of on^ s friend.'' It is 
plain that this positive teaching of culture is open to 
the same objections, and is based on the same fal- 
lacy, as the positive teaching of morals. It does 
not teach us, indeed, to let right and wrong guide us 
in the choice of our pleasures, in the sense that we 
should choose the one sort and eschew the other ; 
but teaching us to choose the two, in one sense in- 



LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. 149 

differently, it yet teaches us to choose them as dis- 
tinct and contrasted things. It teaches us in fact to 
combine the two fruits without confusing their fla- 
vours. But in the case of good and evil, as has been 
seen, this is quite impossible ; for good is only good 
as the thing that ought to be chosen ; evil is only evil 
as the thing that ought not to be chosen ; and the 
only reasons that could justify us in combining them 
would altogether prevent our distinguishing them. 
The teachings of positive culture, in fact, rest on the 
naive supposition that shine and shadow, as it were, 
are portable things ; and that we can take bright ob- 
jects out of the sunshine, and dark objects out of 
the shadow, and setting them both together in the 
diffused grey light of a studio, make a magical mo- 
saic out of them, of gloom and glitter. Or such 
teachings, to put the matter yet more simply, are 
like telling us to pick a primrose at noonday, and to 
set it by our bed-side for a night-light. 

It is plain therefore that, in that loss of zest and 
interest, which the deadening of the moral sense, as 
we have seen, must bring to life, we shall get no 
help there. The massy fabric of which saints and 
heroes were the builders, will never be re-elected by 
this mincing moral dandyism. 

But there is another last resource of the modern 
school, which is far more worthy of attention, and 
which, being entirely sui generis, I have reserved 



100 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVINO? 

to treat of here. That resource is the devotion to 
truth as truth ; not for the sake of its consequences, 
but in scorn of them. Here we are told we have at 
least one moral end that can never be taken away 
from us. It will still survive to give life a meaning, 
a dignity, and a value, even should the pursuit of it 
prove destructive to all the others. The language 
used by the modern school upon this subject is very 
curious and instructive. I will take two typical in- 
stances. The common argument, says Dr. Tyndall, 
in favour of belief is the comfort and the gladness 
that it brings us, its redemption of life, in fact, from 
that dead and dull condition we have been Just con- 
sidering. '■To this,'' he says, ^my reply is that I 
choose the nobler part of Emerson when, after vari- 
ous dis enchantments, he exclaimed '■^ I covet truth ! " 
The gladness of true heroism visits the heart of Mm 
who is really competent to say this.^ The following 
sentences are Professor Huxley' s : '' If it is demon- 
strated to me,'' he says, Hhat without this or that 
theological dogma the human race will lapse into 
Mpedal cattle, more brutal than the beasts by rea- 
son of their greater cleverness, my next question is 
to ask for the proof of the dogma. If this proof is 
forthcoming, it is my conviction that no drowning 
sailor ever clutched a hencoop more tenaciously than 
manJcind will hold by such dogma, whatever it may 
be. But if not, then I verily believe that the human 



LIFE AS ITS OWir EEWABD. 151 

race will go its own eml way ; and my only consola- 
tion lies in the rejiection that, howemr had our ])os- 
terity may become, so long as they hold by the plain 
rule of not pretending to believe what they have no 
reason to believe, because it may be to their advan- 
tage so to pretend, they will not have reached the 
lowest depths of immorality.'^ I will content myself 
with these two instances, but others of a similar 
kind might be multiplied indefinitely. 

I^ow by a simple substitution of terms, such lan- 
guage as this will reveal at once one important fact 
to us. According to the avowed principles of posi- 
tive morality, morality has no other test but happi- 
ness. Immorality, therefore, can have no conceiva- 
ble meaning but unhappiness, or at least the means 
to it, which in this case are hardly distinguishable 
from the end ; and thus, according to the above 
rigid reasoners, the human race will not have reached 
the lowest depths of misery so long as it rejects the 
one thing which ex hypothesi might render it less 
miserable. Either then all this talk about truth 
must really be so much irrelevant nonsense, or else, 
if it be not nonsense, the test of conduct is some- 
thing distinct from happiness. The question before 
us is a plain one, which may be answered in one of 
two ways, but which positivism cannot possibly an- 
swer in both. Is truth to be sought only because it 
conduces to happiness, or is happiness only to be 



152 I<9 LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

sought for when it is based on truth ? In the latter 
case truth, not happiness, is the test of conduct. 
Are our positive moralists prepared to admit this ? 
If so, let them explicitly and consistently say so. 
Let them keep this test and reject the other, for the 
two cannot be fused together. 

oc,oi T aXstqia r kyx^^'' TavrcS kvtei 
Sixodrarovvr av ov q^iXoiv ■/tpodevvsTtot?. 

This inconsistency is here, however, only a side point 
— a passing illustration of the slovenliness of the 
positivist logic. As far as my present argument goes, 
we may let this pass altogether, and allow the Joint 
existence of these mutually exclusive ends. What 
I am about to do is to show that on positive grounds 
the last of these is more hopelessly inadequate than 
the first — that truth as a moral end has even more of 
religion in its composition than happiness, and that 
when this religion goes, its value will even more 
hopelessly evaporate. 

At first sight this may seem impossible. The de- 
votion to truth may seem as simple as it is sacred. 
But if we consider the matter further, we shall soon 
think differently. To begin then ; truth, as the posi- 
tivists speak of it, is plainly a thing that is to be wor- 
shipped in two ways — firstly by its discovery, and 
secondly by its publication. Thus Professor Huxley, 
however much it may pain him, will not hide from 



LIFE AS ITS OWN REWARD. 153 

Mm self the fact that there is no God ; and however 
bad this knowledge may be for humanity, his highest 
and most sacred duty still consists in imparting it. 
Now why should this be ? I ask. Is it simply be- 
cause the fact in question is the truth ? That surely 
cannot be so, as a few other examples will show us. 
A man discovers that his wife has been seduced by 
his best friend. Is there anything very high or very 
sacred in that discovery ? Having made it, does he 
feel any consolation in the knowledge that it is the 
entire truth ? And will the ' gladness of true hero- 
ism ' visit him if he proclaims it to everyone in his 
club 1 A chattering nurse betrays his danger to a 
sick man. The sick man takes fright and dies. Was 
the discovery of the truth of his danger very glorious 
for the iDatient ? or was its publication very sacred in 
the nurse % Clearly the truths that it is sacred to 
find out and to publish are not all truths, but truths 
of a certain kind only. They are not particular 
truths like these, but the universal and eternal truths 
that underlie them. They are in fact what we call 
the truths of ISTature, and the apprehension of them, 
or truth as attained by us, means the putting our- 
selves en rapport with the life of that infinite exist- 
ence which surrounds and sustains all of us. Now 
since it is this kind of truth only that is supposed to 
be so sacred, it is clear that its sacredness does not 
depend on itself, but on its object. Truth is sacred 



154 IS LIFE WOBTH LIVING ? 

because TTature is sacred ; Nature is not sacred be- 
cause truth is ; and our supreme duty to trutli means 
neither more nor less than a supreme faith in IS'ature. 
It means that there is a something in the Infinite 
outside ourselves that corresponds to a certain some- 
thing within ourselves ; that this^latter something is 
the strongest and the highest part of us, and that it 
can find no rest but in communion with its larger 
counterpart. Truth sought for in this way is evidently 
a distinct thing from the truth of utilitarianism. It 
is no false reflection of human happiness in the 
clouds. For it is to be sought for none the less, as 
our positivists decidedly tell us, even though all 
other hapjDiness should be ruined by it. Now what 
on positive principles is the groundwork of this 
teaching ? All ethical epithets such as sacred, heroic, 
and so forth — all the words, in fact, that are by 
implication applied to Nature — have absolutely no 
meaning save as applied to conscious beings ; and 
as a subject for positive observation, there exists no 
consciousness in the universe outside this earth. By 
what conceivable means, then, can the positivists 
transfer to Nature in general qualities which, so far 
as they know, are peculiar to human nature only ? 
They can only do this in one of two ways — both of 
which they would equally repudiate — either by an 
act of fancy, or by an act of faith. Tested rigidly 
by their own fundamental common principles, it is 



LIFE A8 ITS OWN REWARD. 155 

as unmeaning to call the universe sacred as to say 
that the moon talks French, 

Let us however pass this by ; let us refuse to sub- 
ject their teaching to the extreme rigour of even 
their own law ; and let us grant that by some mixed 
use of fancy or of mysticism, they can turn to ]N'a- 
ture as to some vast moral hieroglyph. What sort 
of morality do they find in it ? Nature, as positive 
observation reveals her to us, is a thing that can 
have no claim either on our reverence or our appro- 
bation. Once apply any moral test to her conduct, 
and as J. S, Mill has so forcibly pointed out, she be- 
comes a monster. There is no crime that men abhor 
or perpetrate that Nature does not commit daily on 
an exaggerated scale. She knows no sense either of 
justice or mercy. Continually indeed she seems to 
be tender, and loving, and bountiful ; but all that, 
at such times, those that know her can exclaim to 
her, is 

3fiseri quibus 
Intentata nites. 

At one moment she will be blessing a country with 
plenty, peace, and sunshine ; and she will the next 
moment ruin the whole of it by an earthquake. 
Now she is the image of thrift, now of prodigality ; 
now of the utmost purity, now of the most revolting 
filth ; and if, as I say, she is to be judged by any 
moral standard at all, her capacities for what is ad- 



156 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

mirable not only make her crimes tlie darker, but 
tliey also make her virtues partake of the nature of 
sin. How, then, can an intimacy with this eternal 
criminal be an ennobling or a sacred thing? The 
theist, of course, believes that truth is sacred. But 
his belief rests on a foundation that has been alto- 
gether renounced by the positivists. He values 
truth because, in whatever direction it takes him, it 
takes him either to God or towards Him — God, to 
whom he is in some sort akin, and after whose like- 
ness he is in some sort made. He sees Nature to be 
cruel, wicked, and bewildering when viewed by it- 
self. But behind Nature he sees a vaster power — his 
father — in whom mysteriously all contradictions are 
reconciled. Nature for him is God' s, but it is not 
God ; and '"though God slay me,' he says, '■yet will 
I trust in Him.'' This trust can be attained to only 
by an act of faith like this. No observation or ex- 
periment, or any positive method of any kind, ^dll 
be enough to give it us ; rather, without faith, obser- 
vation and experiment will do nothing but make it 
seem impossible. Thus a belief in the sacredness of 
Nature, or, in other words, in the essential value of 
truth, is as strictly an act of religion, as strictly a 
defiance of the whole positive formula, as any article 
in any ecclesiastical creed. It is simply a concrete 
form of the beginning of the Christian symbol, ' I 
helieve in God the Father Almighty.'' It rests on the 



LIFE AS ITS OTFiT REWARD. 157 

same foundation, neither more nor less. IS'or is it too 
much to say that without a religion, without a belief 
in God, no fetish-worship was ever more ridiculous 
than this cultus of natural truth. 

This subject is so important that it will be well to 
dwell on it a little longer. I will take another pas- 
' sage from Dr. Tyndall, which presents it to us in a 
slightly different light, and which speaks explicitly 
not of truth itself, but of that sacred Object beyond, 
of which truth is only the sacramental channel to 
us. ' " Two things,^'' said Imanuel KanV (it is thus 
Dr. Tyndall writes), ' "j^ZZ me with awe — tTie starry 
liea'oens, and tTie sense of moral responsihility in 
man?'' And in tlie hours of health and strength 
and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased., 
and when the pause of refection has set in, the sci- 
entific investigator finds himself overshadowed hy 
the same awe. Breaking contact with the hamper- 
ing details of earth, it associates him with a power 
which gives fulness and tone to his existence, hut 
which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.^ 
This, Dr. Tyndall tells us, is the only rational state- 
ment of the fact of that '■divine communion,'' whose 
nature is ' simply distorted and desecrated'' by the 
unwarranted assumptions of theism. 

IS'ow let us try to consider accurately what Dr. 
Tyndall's statement means. Knowledge of Nature, 
he says, associates him with Nature. It withdraws 



158 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

him from Hhe liampering details of earth,'' and ena- 
bles the individual human being to have communion 
with a something that is beyond humanity. But 
what is communion ? It is a word with no meaning 
at all save as referring to conscious beings. There 
could be no communion between two corpses ; nor, 
again, between a corpse and a living man. Dr. Tyn- 
dall, for instance, could have no communion with a 
dead canary. Communion imjDlies the existence on 
both sides of a common something. I^ow what is 
there in common between Dr. Tyndall and the starry 
heavens, or that ''power ' of which the starry heavens 
are the embodiment ? Dr. Tyndall expressly says 
that he not only does not know what there is in 
common, but that he ^ dare"* not even say that, as 
conscious beings, they two have anything in common 
at all.' The only things he can know about the 
power in question are that it is vast, and that it is 
uniform ; but a contemplation of these qualities by 
themselves, must tend rather to produce in him a 
sense of separation from it than of union with it. 
United with it, in one sense, he of course is ; he is a 

' ' When I attempt to give the poicer tchich I see manifested in the uni- 
verse an ohjectiveform, personal or othencise, it slips away from me, de- 
clining all intellectual manipulation. I dare not, save iwetically, use 
the pronoun " He " regarding it. 1 dare not call it a " Mind." 1 re- 
fuse even to call it a " Cause." Its mystery overshadoics me ; hut it re- 
mains a mystery, while the objective frames tchich my neighbours try to 
make it fit, simply distort and desecrate it.' — Dr. Tyndall, 'Materialism 
and its Opponents,' 



LIFE A8 ITS OWIf REWARD. 159 

fraction of the sum of tilings, and everything, in a 
certain way, is dependent npon everything else. 
But in this union there is nothing special. Its exist- 
ence is an obvious fact, common to all men, whether 
they dwell upon it or no : and though by a knowl- 
edge of Nature we may grow to realise it more 
keenly, it is im]30ssible to make the union in the 
least degree closer, or to turn it into anything that 
can be in any way called a communion. Indeed, for 
the positivists to talk about communion or associa- 
tion with Nature is about as rational as to talk about 
communion or association with a steam-engine. The 
starry skies at night are doubtless an imposing spec- 
tacle ; but man, on positive principles, can be no 
more raised by watching them than a commercial 
traveller can by watching a duke — iDrobably far less : 
for if the duke were well behaved, the commercial 
traveller might perhaps learn some manners from 
him ; but there is nothing in the panorama of the 
universe that can in any way be any model for the 
positivist. There are but two respects in which he 
can compare himself to the rest of nature — firstly, 
as a revealed force ; and, secondly, as a force that 
works by law. But the forces that are revealed by 
the stars, for instance, are vast, and the force re- 
vealed in himself is small ; and he, as he considers, 
is a self-determining agent, and the stars are not. 
There are but two points of comparison between the 



160 J^'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

two ; and in these two points they are contrasts, and 
not likenesses. It is true, indeed, as I said just now, 
thg^t a sense of awe and of hushed solemnity is, as a 
fact, born in us at the spectacle of the starry heavens 
—world upon luminous world shining and quivering 
silently ; it is true, too, that a spontaneous feeling 
connects such a sense somehow with our deepest 
moral being. But this, on positive principles, must 
be feeling only. It means absolutely nothing : it 
can have no objective fact that corresponds to it. It 
is an illusion, a pathetic fallacy. And to say that 
the heavens with their stars declare to us anything 
high or holy, is no more rational than to say that 
Brighton does, which itself, seen at night from the 
sea, is a long braid of stars descended upon the wide 
horizon. All that the study of nature, all that the 
love of truth, can do for the positivist is not to guide 
him to any communion with a vaster power, but to 
show him that no such communion is possible. His 
devotion to truth, if it mean anything — and the lan- 
guage he often uses about it betrays this — let us 
know the worst, not let us find out the best : — a wish 
which is neither more nor less noble than the wish 
to sit down at once in a slop upon the floor rather 
than sustain oneself any longer above it on a chair 
that is discovered to be rickety. 

Here then again, in this last resource of positivism 
we have religion embodied as a yet more important 



LIFE AS ITS OWJ!^ BEWABD. \Q\ 

element than in any of the others ; and when this 
element is driven out of it, it collapses yet more 
hopelessly than they do. By the whole j)ositive 
system we are bound to human life. There is no 
mystical machinery by which we can rise above it. 
It is by its own isolated worth that this life must 
stand or fall. 

And what, let us again ask, will this worth 
be 1 The question is of course, as I have said, 
too vague to admit of more than a general answer, 
but a general answer, as I have said also, may be 
given confidently enough. Man when fully im- 
bued with the positive view of himself, will inev- 
itably be an animal of far fewer capacities than 
he at present is. He will not be able to suffer so 
much ; but also he will not be able to enjoy so 
much. Surround him, in imagination, with the 
most favourable circumstances ; let social progress 
have been carried to the utmost perfection ; and let 
him have access to every happiness of which we can 
conceive him capable. It is impossible even thus to 
conceive of life as a very valuable possession to him. 
It would at any rate be far less valuable than it is 
to many men now, under outer circumstances that 
are far less favourable. The goal to which a purely 
human progress is capable of conducting us, is thus 
no vague condition of glory and felicity, in which 
men shall develop new and ampler powers. It is a 
11 



162 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

condition in which the keenest life attainable has 
continually been far surpassed already, without any- 
thing having been arrived at that in itself seemed of 
surpassing value. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE SUPEESTITIOlSr OF POSITIVISM. 

Glendower. lean call spirits from the vasty deep. 
HoTSPUK. Why so can I, or so can any man, 

But will they come vihen you do call for tJiem ? 

Henry IV, Part 1. 

General and indefinite as the foregoing considera- 
tions have been, they are quite definite enough to be 
of the utmost practical import. They are definite 
enough to show the utter hollo wness of that vague 
faith in progress, and the glorious prospects that lie 
before humanity, on which the positive school at 
present so much rely, and about which so much is 
said. To a certain extent, indeed, a faith in pro- 
gress is perfectly rational and well grounded. There 
are many imperfections in life, which the course of 
events tends manifestly to lessen if not to do away 
with, and so far as these are concerned, improve- 
ments may go on indefinitely. But the things that 
this progress touches are, as has been said before, 
not happiness, but the negative conditions of it. A 
belief in this kind of progress is not peculiar to 
positivism. It is common to all educated men, no 
matter what their creed may be. What is peculiar 

163 



164 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

to positivism is the strange corollary to this belief, 
that man's subjective powers of happiness w^ill go on 
expanding likewise. It is the belief not only that 
the existing pleasures will become more diffused, but 
that they will, as George Eliot says, become '-more 
intense in diffusion.'' It is this belief on which the 
positivists rely to create that enthusiasm, that im- 
passioned benevolence, which is to be the motive 
power of their whole ethical machinery. They have 
taken away the Christian heaven, and have thus 
turned adrift a number of hopes and aspirations 
that were once powerful. These hopes and aspira- 
tions they acknowledge to be of the first necessity ; 
they are facts, they say, of human nature, and no 
higher progress would be possible without them. 
What the enlightened thought is to do is not to ex- 
tinguish, but to transfer them. They are to be given 
a new object more satisfactory than the old one ; not 
our own private glory in another world, but the 
common glory of our whole race in this. 

IS'ow let us consider for a moment some of the 
positive criticisms on the Christian heaven, and 
then apply them to the proposed substitute. The 
belief in heaven, say the positivists, is to be set aside 
for two great reasons. In the first place there is no 
objective proof of its existence, and in the second 
place there is subjective proof of its impossibility. 
Not only is it not deducible, but it is not even 



TEE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. igg 

tliinkable. Give the imagination carte hlanclie to 
constrnct it, and the imagination will either do noth- 
ing, or will do something ridiculous. ^ My position 
\ioit?i regard to this matter'] ' says a popular living 
writer,' Hs this — The idea of a glorified energy in 
an ampler life, is an idea utterly incompatible with 
exact thought, one which evaporates in contradic- 
tions, in phrases, which when pressed have no mean- 
ing.^ 

ISTow if this criticism has the least force, as used 
against the Christian heaven, it has certainly far 
more as used against the future glories of humanity. 
The positivists ask the Christians how they expect 
to enjoy themselves in heaven. The Christians may, 
with far more force, ask the positivists how they ex- 
pect to enjoy themselves on earth. For the Christians' 
heaven being ex hypothesi an unknown world, they 
do not stultify their expectations from being unable 
to describe them. On the contrary it is a part of 
their faith that they are indescribable. But the 
positivists' heaven is altogether in this world ; and 
no mystical faith has any place in their system. In 
this case, therefore, whatever we may think of the 
other, it is plain that the tests in question are alto- 
gether complete and final. To the Christians, in- 
deed, it is quite open to make their supposed shame 
their glory, and to say that their heaven would be 

' Mr. Frederic Harrison. 



166 J^S LIFE WORTS LIVING? 

nothing if describable. The positivists have bound 
themselves to admit that theirs is nothing unless 
describable. 

What then, let us ask the enthusiasts of human- 
ity, will humanity be like in its ideally perfect state ? 
Let them show us some sample of the general future 
perfection ; let them describe one of the nobler, 
ampler, glorified human beings of the future. What 
will he be like ? What will he long for ? What will 
he take pleasure in '\ How will he spend his days ? 
How will he make love % What will he laugh at ? 
And let him be described in phrases which when 
pressed do not evaporate in contradictions, but 
which have some distinct meaning, and are not in- 
compatible with exact thougfd. Do our exact think- 
ers in the least know what they are prophesying ? 
If not, what is the meaning of their prophecy ? The 
prophecies of the positive school are rigid scientific 
inferences ; they are that or nothing. And one can- 
not infer an event of whose nature one is wholly 
ignorant. 

Let these obvious questions be put to our positive 
moralists — these questions they have themselves sug- 
gested, and the grotesque unreality of this vague 
optimism will be at once apparent. IS'ever was va- 
gary of mediaeval faith so groundless as this. The 
Earthly Paradise that the mediaeval world believed 
in was not more mythical than the Earthly Paradise 



THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 167 

believed in by our exact thinkers now ; and George 
Eliot might just as well start in a Cunard steamer to 
find the one, as send her faith into the future to find 
the other. 

Could it be shown that these splendid anticipations 
were well founded, they might perhaps kindle some 
new and active enthusiasm ; though it is very doubt- 
ful, even then, if the desire would be ardent enough 
to bring about its own accomplishment. This, how- 
ever, it is quite useless to consider, the anticipations 
in question being simply an empty dream. A cer- 
tain kind of improvement, as I have said, we are no 
doubt right in looking for, not only with confidence, 
but with complacency. But positivism, so far from 
brightening this prospect, makes it indefinitely dul- 
ler than it would be otherwise. The practical re- 
sults therefore to be looked for from a faith in prog- 
ress may be seen at their utmost already in the 
world around us ; and the positivists may make the 
sobering reflection that their system can only change 
these from what they already see them, not by 
strengthening, but by weakening them. Take the 
world then as it is at present, and the sense, on the 
individual' s part, that he personally is promoting its 
progress, can belong to, and can stimulate, excep- 
tional men only, who are doing some public work ; 
and it will be found even in these cases that the 
pleasure which this sense gives them is largely forti- 



168 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

fied (as is said of wine) by the entirely alien sense of 
fame and power. On the generality of men it neither 
has, nor can have, any effect whatever, or even if it 
gives a glow to their inclinations in some cases, it 
will at any rate never curb them in any. The fact 
indeed that things in general do tend to get better 
in certain ways, must produce in most men not effort 
but acquiescence. It may, when the imagination 
brings it home to them, shed a pleasing light occa- 
sionally over the surface of their private lives : but 
it would be as irrational to count on this as a stimu- 
lus to farther action, as to expect that the summer 
sunshine would work a steam-engine. 

If we consider, then, that even the present condi- 
tion of things is far more calculated to produce the 
enthusiasm of humanity than the condition that the 
positivists are preparing for themselves, we shall see 
how utterly chimerical is their entire practical system. 
It is like a drawing of a cathedral, which looks 
magnificent at the first glance, but which a second 
glance shows to be composed of structural impossi- 
bilities — blocks of masonry resting on no founda- 
tions, columns hanging from the roofs, instead of sup- 
porting them, and doors and windows with inverted 
arches. The positive system could only work prac- 
tically were human nature to suffer a complete change 
— a change which it has no spontaneous tendency to 
make, which no known power could ever tend to 



TEE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 169 

force on it, and wliicli, in short, there is no ground 
of any kind for expecting. 

There are two characteristics in men, for instance, 
which, though they undoubtedly do exist, the posi- 
tive system requires to be indefinitely magnified — the 
imagination, and unselfishness. The work of the 
imagination is to present to the individual conscious- 
ness the remote ends to which all progress is to be 
directed ; and the desire to work for these is, on the 
positive supposition, to conquer all mere personal 
impulses. Now men have already had an end set be- 
fore them, in the shape of the joys of heaven, which 
was far brighter and far more real to them than these 
others can ever be ; and yet the imagination has so 
failed to keep this before them, that its small effect 
upon their lives is a common]3lace with the positivists 
themselves. How then can these latter hope that 
their own pale and distant ideal will have a more 
vivid effect on the world than that near and glowing 
one, in whose place they put it ? AVill it incite men 
to virtues to which heaven could not incite them ? or 
lure them away from vices from which hell-fire would 
not scare them ? Before it can do so, it is plain that 
human nature must have completely changed, and 
its elements have been re-mixed, in completely new 
proportions. In a state of things where such a result 
was possible, a man would do a better day's work 
for a penny to be given to his unborn grandson, than 



170 J'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

he would now do for a pound to be paid to himself 
at sunset. 

For argument' s sake, however, let us suppose such 
a change possible. Let us suppose the imagination 
to be so developed that the remote end of progress — 
that happier state of men in some far off century — 
is ever vividly present to us as a possibility we may 
help to realise. Another question still remains for 
us. To preserve this happiness for others, we are 
told, we must to a large extent sacriiice our own. Is 
it in human nature to make this sacrifice ? The posi- 
tive moralists assure us that it is, and for this reason. 
Man, they say, is an animal who enjoys vicariously 
with almost as much zest as in his own person ; and 
therefore to procure a greater pleasure for others 
makes him far happier than to procure a less one for 
himself. In this statement, as I have observed in an 
earlier chapter, there is no doubt a certain general 
truth ; but how far it will hold good in particular 
instances depends altogether on particular circum- 
stances. It depends on the temperament of the per- 
son who is to make the sacrifice, on the nature of his 
feelings towards the person for whom he is to make 
it, and on the proportion between the pleasure he is 
to forego himself, and the pleasure he is to secure 
for another. ]N'ow if we consider human nature as 
it is, and the utmost development of it that on posi- 
tive grounds is possible, the conditions that can pro- 



THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 171 

duce the requisite self-sacrifice will be found to be 
altogether wanting. The future we are to labour for, 
even when viewed in its brightest light, will only excel 
the present in having fewer miseries. So far as its 
happiness goes it will be distinctly less intense. It 
will, as we have seen already, be but a vapid consum- 
mation at its best ; and the more vividly it is brought 
before us in imagination, the less likely shall we be 
to ' struggle, groan, and agonize,'' for the sake of 
hastening it in reality. It wiU do nothing, at any 
rate, to increase the tendency to self-sacrifice that is 
now at work in the world ; and this, though startling 
us now and then by some spasmodic manifestation, 
is not strong enough to have much general effect on 
the present ; still less will it have more effect on the 
future. Vicarious happiness as a rule is only pos- 
sible when the object gained for another is enor- 
mously greater than the object lost by self ; and it 
is not always possible even then : whilst when the 
gains on either side are nearly equal, it ceases alto- 
gether. And necessarily so. If it did not, every- 
thing would be at a dead-lock. Life would be a per- 
petual holding back, instead of a pushing forward. 
Everyone would be waiting at the door, and saying 
to everyone else, '■ After you.'' But all these practi- 
cal considerations are entirely forgotten by the posi- 
tivists. They live in a world of their own imagining, 
in which all the rules of this world are turned upside 



172 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

down. There, the defeated candidate in an election 
would be radiant at liis rival' s victory. When a will 
was read, the anxiety of each relative would be that 
he or she should be excluded in favour of the oth- 
ers ; or more probably still that they should be all 
excluded in favour of a hospital. Two rivals, in love 
with the same woman, would be each anxious that 
his own suit might be thwarted. And a man would 
gladly involve himself in any ludicrous misfortune, 
because he knew that the sight of his catastrophe 
would rejoice his whole circle of friends. The course 
of human progress, in fact, would be one gigantic 
donkey-race, in which those were the winners who 
were farthest off from the prize. 

We have but to state the matter in terms of com- 
mon life, to see how impossible is the only condition 
of things that would make the positive system prac- 
ticable. The first wonder that suggests itself, is how 
so grotesque a conception could ever have origi- 
nated. But its genesis is not far to seek. The posi- 
tivists do not postulate any new elements in human 
nature, but the reduction of some, elimination of 
others, and the magnifying of others. And they 
actually find cases where this process has been 
effected. But they quite forget the circumstances 
that have made such an event possible. They forget 
that in their very nature they have been altogether 
exceptional and transitory ; and that it is impossible 



THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 173 

to construct a Utopia in wliicli tliey shall exist 
at all. We can, for instance, no doubt point to 
Leonidas and the three hundred as specimens of 
what human heroism can rise to ; and we can point 
to the Stoics as specimens of human self-control. 
But to make a new Thermopylae we want a new Bar- 
barian ; and before we can recoil from temptation as 
the Stoics did, we must make pleasure as perilous 
and as terrible as it was under the Roman emperors. 
Such developments of humanity are at their very 
essence abnormal ; and to suppose that they could 
ever become the common type of character, would 
be as absurd as to suppose that all mankind could 
be kings. I will take another instance that is more 
to the point yet. A favourite positivist parable is 
that of the miser. The miser in the first place de- 
sires gold because it can buy pleasure. Next ho 
comes to desire it more than the pleasure it can buy. 
In the same way, it is said, men can be taught to de- 
sire virtue by investing it with the attractions of the 
end, to which, strictly speaking it is no more than 
the means. But this parable really disproves the 
very possibility it is designed to illustrate. It is de- 
signed to illustrate the possibility of our choosing 
actions that will give pleasure to others, in con- 
tradistinction to actions that will give pleasure to 
ourselves. But the miser desires gold for an exactly 
opposite reason. He desires it as potential selfish- 



174 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

ness, not as potential philanthropy. Secondly, we are 
to choose the actions in question because they will 
make us happy. But the very name we give the miser 
shows that the analogous choice in his case makes 
him miserable. Thirdly, the material miser is an ex- 
ceptional character ; there is no known means by 
which it can be made more common ; and with the 
moral miser the case will be just the same. Lastly, if 
such a character be barely producible even in the pres- 
ent state of the world, much less will it be producible 
when human capacities shall have been curtailed by 
positivism, when the pleasures that the gold of virtue 
represents are less intense than at present, and the 
value of the coveted coin is indefinitely depreciated. 
Much more might be added to the same purpose, 
but enough has been said already to make these two 
points clear : — firstly, that the positive system, if it 
is to do any practical work in the world, requires 
that the whole human character shall be profoundly 
altered ; and secondly, that the required alteration 
is one that may indeed be dreamt about, but which 
can never possibly be made. Even were it made, 
the results would not be splendid ; but no matter 
how splendid they might be, this is of no possible 
moment to us. There are few things on which it is 
idler to speculate than the issues of impossible con- 
tingencies. And the positivists would be talking 
just as much to the purpose as they do now, were 



TEE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 175 

they to tell us how fast we should travel supposing 
we had wings, or what deep water we could wade 
through if we were twenty-four feet high. These 
last, indeed, are Just the suppositions that they 
do make. Between our human nature and the 
nature they desiderate there is a deep and fordless 
river, over which they can throw no bridge, and all 
their talk supposes that we shall be able to fly or 
wade across it, or else that it will dry up of itself. 

Busticus expectat dum dejluat amnis, at ille 
Labitur et labetur, in omne volubilis (Evum. 

So utterly grotesque and chimerical is this whole pos- 
itive theory of progress, that, as an outcome of the 
present age, it seems little short of a miracle. Profes- 
sing to embody what that age considers its special 
characteristics, what it really embodies is the most 
emphatic negation of these. It professes to rest on 
experience, and yet no Christian legend ever contra- 
dicted experience more. It professes to be sustained 
by proof, and yet the professions of no conjuring 
quack ever appealed more exclusively to credulity. 

Its appearance, however, will cease to be wonder- 
ful, and its real significance will become more appa- 
rent, if we consider the class of thinkers who have 
elaborated and popularised it. They have been men 
and women, for the most part, who have had the 
following characteristics in common. Their early 



176 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

training has been religious ; ' their temperaments 
have been naturally grave and earnest ; they have 
had few strong passions ; they have been brought 
up knowing little of what is commonly called the 
world ; their intellects have been vigorous and ac- 
tive ; and finally they have rejected in maturity the 
religion by which all their thoughts have been 
coloured. The result has been this. The death of 
their religion has left a quantity of moral emotions 
without an object ; and this disorder of the moral emo- 
tions has left their mental energies without a leader. 
A new object instantly becomes a necessity. They 
are ethical Don Quixotes in want of a Dulcinea ; the 
best they can find is happiness and the progress of 
Humanity ; and to this their imagination soon gives 
the requisite glow. Their strong intellects, their ac- 
tivity, and their literary culture each supplements the 
power that it undoubtedly does give, with a sense 
of knowing the world that is altogether fictitious. 
They imagine that their own narrow lives, their own 
feeble temptations, and their own exceptional ambi- 

^ The case of J. S. Mill may seem at first sight to be an exception to 
this. But it is really not so. Though he was brought up without 
any religious teaching, yet the severe and earnest influences of his 
childhood would have been impossible except in a religious country. 
He was in fact brought up in an atmosphere (if I may borrow with a 
slight change a phrase of Professor Huxley's) of Puritanism minus 
Christianity. It may be remembered farther that Mill says of him- 
self, ' 1 am one of the very few examples of one who has not thrown off 
religious belief, hut never had it. ' 



THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. I77 

tions represent the universal elements of human life 
and character ; and they thus expect that an object 
which has really been but the creature of an impulse 
in themselves, will be the creator of a like impulse 
in others ; and that in the case of others, it will rev- 
olutionise the whole natural character, whereas it 
has only been a symbol of it in their own. 

Most of our positive moralists, at least in this coun_ 
try, have been and are people of such excellent char- 
acter, and such earnest and high purpose, that there 
is something painful in having to taunt them with an 
ignorance which is not their own fault, and which 
must make their whole position ridiculous. The 
charge, however, is one that it is quite necessary to 
make, as we shall never properly estimate their sys- 
tem if we pass it over. It will be said, probably, that 
the simplicity as to worldly matters I attribute to 
them, so far from telling against them, is really essen- 
tial to their character as moral teachers. And to 
moral teachers of a certain kind it may be essential. 
But it is not so to them. The religious moralist 
might well instruct the world, though he knew little 
of its ways and passions ; for the aim of his teaching 
was to withdraw men from the world. But the aim 
of the positive moralist is precisely opposite ; it is to 
keep men in the world. It is not to teach men to 
despise this life, but to adore it. The positions of 
the two moralists are in fact the exact converses of 
12 



178 ^3 LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

eacli other. For the divine, eartli is an illusion, 
heaven a reality ; for the positivist, earth is a reality, 
and heaven an illusion. The former in his retire- 
ment studied intensely the world that he thought 
real, and he could do this the better for being not 
distracted by the other. The positivists imitate the 
divine in neglecting what they think is an illusion ; 
but they do not attempt to imitate him in studying 
what they think is the reality. The consequence is, 
as I have Just been pointing out, that the world they 
live in and to which alone their system could be ap- 
plicable, is a world of their own creation, and its 
bloodless populations are all of them idola specus. 

If we will but think all this calmly over, and try 
really to sympathise with the position of these poor 
enthusiasts, we shall soon see their system in its true 
light, and shall learn at once to realise and to excuse 
its fatuity. We shall see that it either has no mean- 
ing whatever, or that its meaning is one that its 
authors have already repudiated, and only do not 
recognise now, because they have so inadequately 
re-expressed it. We shall see that their system has 
no motive power at all in it, or that its motive power 
is simply the theistic faith they rejected, now tied up 
in a sack and left to flounder instead of walking up- 
right. We shall see that their system is either noth- 
ing, or that it is a mutilated reproduction of the very 
thing it professes to be superseding. Once set it 



THE STJPEBSTITION OF POSITIVISM. 179 

upon its own professed foundations, and the entire 
quasi-religious structure, with its visionary hopes, its 
impossible enthusiasms — all its elaborate apparatus 
for enlarging the single life, and the generation that 
surrounds it, falls to earth instantly like a castle of 
cards. We are left simply each of us with our own 
lives, and with the life about us, amplified indeed to 
a certain extent by sympathy, but to a certain ex- 
tent only — an extent whose limits we are quite 
familiar with from experience, and which positivism, 
if it tends to move them at all, can only narrow, and 
can by no possibility extend. We are left with this 
life, changed only in one way. It will have nothing 
added to it, but it will have much taken from it. 
Everything will have gone that is at present keenest 
in it — joys and miseries as well. In this way posi- 
tivism is indeed an engine of change, and may in- 
augurate if not complete a most momentous kind of 
progress. That progress is the gradual de-religionis- 
ing of life, the slow sublimating out of it of its con- 
crete theism— the slow destruction of its whole moral 
civilisation. And as this progress continues there 
will not only fade out of the human consciousness 
the things I have before dwelt on — all capacity for the 
keener pains and pleasures, but there will fade out 
of it also that strange sense which is the union of all 
these — the white light woven of all these rays ; that 
is, the vague but deep sense of some special dignity 



180 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

in ourselves — a sense whicli we feel to be our birth- 
right, inalienable except by our own act and deed ; 
a sense which, at present, in success sobers us, and 
in failure sustains us, and which is visible more or 
less distinctly in our manners, in our bearing, and 
even in the very expression of the human counte- 
nance: it is, in other words, the sense that life is 
worth living, not accidentally but essentially. And 
as this sense goes its place will be taken by one pre- 
cisely opposite — the sense that life, in so far as it is 
worth living at all, is worth living not essentially, but 
accidentally ; that it depends entirely upon what of 
its pleasures we can each one of us realise ; that it 
will vary as a positive quantity, like wealth, and that 
it may become also a various quantity, like poverty ; 
and that behind and beyond these vicissitudes it can 
have no abiding value. 

To realise fully a state of things like this is for 
us not possible. But we can, however, understand 
something of its nature. I conceive those to be 
altogether wrong who say that such a state would be 
one of any wild license, or anything that we should 
call very revolting depravity. Offences, certainly, 
that we consider the most abominable would doubt- 
less be committed continually and as matters of 
course. Such a feeling as shame about them would 
be altogether unknown. But the normal forms of 
passion would remain, I conceive, the most impor- 



THE SUPERSTITION OF POSITIVISM. IQl 

tant ; and it is probable, that though no form of vice 
would have the least anathema attached to it, the 
rage for the sexual pleasures would be far less fierce 
than it is in many cases now. The sort of condition 
to which the world would be tending would be a con- 
dition rather of dulness than what we, in our par- 
lance, should now call degradation. Indeed the state 
of things to which the positive view of life seems to 
promise us, and which to some extent it is actually 
now bringing on us, is exactly what was predicted 
long ago, with an accuracy that seems little less than 
inspired, at the end of Pope's Dunciad. 

In vain, in vain : the all-composing hour 
Resistless falls ! the muse obeys the power. 
She comes ! she comes ! the sable throne behold 
Of night primceval and of chaos old. 
Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, 
And all its varying rainbows die away. 
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires. 
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. 
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain. 
The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain ; 
As Argus' eyes, by Hermes' wand oppress'd 
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest ; 
Thus, at her felt aiiproach and secret might. 
Art after art goes out, and all is night. 
See skulking truth to her old cavern fled. 
Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head. 
Philosophy , that lean'd on heaven before. 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more. 



183 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

Physic of metaphysic begs defence, 

And metaphysic calls for aid on sense! 

See mystery to mathematics fiy. 

In vain : they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. 

Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires ; 

And, unawares, morality ea'pircs. 

2f or public flame, nor private, dares to shine. 

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine. 

Lo ! thy dread empire. Chaos ! is restor'd, 

Light dies before thy uncreating word. 

Thy hand, great Anarch ! lets the curtain faM ; 

And universal darkness buries all. 

Dr. Jolinsoii said tliat these verses were the noblest 
in English poetry. Could he have read them in onr 
day, and have realised with what a pitiful accuracy 
their prophecy might soon begin to fulfil itself, he 
would probably have been too busy with dissatis- 
faction at the matter of it to have any time to spare 
for an artistic approbation of the manner. 



CHAPTEH YIII. 

THE PEACTICAL PEOSPECT. 

Kot from the stars do I my judgment pluck . , , 
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell. 

Shakespeare, Sonnet XIV. 

The prospects I have been just describing as the 
goal of positive progress will seem, no doubt, to many 
to be quite impossible in its cheerlessness. If the 
future glory of our race was a dream, not worth dwell- 
ing on, much more so, they will say, is such a future 
abasement of it as this. They will say that optimism 
may at times have perhaps been over-sanguine, but 
that this was simply the exuberance of health ; 
whereas pessimism is, in its very nature, the gloom 
and languor of a disease. 

ITow with much of this view of the matter I en- 
tirely agree. I admit that the prospect I have de- 
scribed may be an impossible one ; personally, I 
believe it is so. I admit also that pessimism is the 
consciousness of disease, confessing itseK. But the 
significance of these admissions is the very oppo- 
site of what it is commonly supposed to be. They 
do not make the pessimism I have been arguing one 
whit less worthy of attention ; on the contrary, they 

183 



184 ^'S LIFE WOBTE LIVING? 

make it more worthy. This is the point on which 
I may most readily be misunderstood. I will 
therefore try to make my meaning as clear as pos- 
sible. 

Pessimism, then, represents, to the popular mind, 
a philosophy or view of life the very name of which 
is enough to condemn it. The popular mind, how- 
ever, overlooks one important point. Pessimism is 
a vague word. It does not represent one philosophy, 
but several; and before we, in any case, reject its 
claims on our attention, we should take care to see 
what its exact meaning is. 

The views of life it includes may be classified in 
two ways. In the first place, they are either what 
we may call critical pessimisms or prospective pes- 
simisms : of which the thesis of the first is that hu- 
man life is essentially evil ; and of the second, that 
whatever human life may be now, its tendency is to 
get worse instead of better. The one is the denial 
of human happiness ; the other the denial of human 
hope. But there is a second classification to make, 
traversing this one, and far more important. Pes- 
simism may be either absolute or hypothetical. The 
first of these maintains its theses as statements of 
actual facts ; the second, which is, of its nature, pro- 
spective mainly, only maintains them as statements 
of what will be facts, in the event of certain possible 
though it may be remote contingencies. 



TEE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 185 

Now, absolute pessimism, whether it be critical or 
prospective, can be nothing, in the present state of 
the world, but an exhibition of ill temper or folly. 
It is hard to imagine a greater waste of ingenuity 
than the attempts that have been made sometimes to 
deduce from the nature of pain and pleasure, that 
the balance in life must be always in favour of the 
former, and that life itself is necessarily and univer- 
sally an evil. Let the arguments be never so elabor- 
ate, they are blown away like cobwebs by a breath 
of open-air experience. Equally useless are the at- 
tempts to predict the gloom of the future. Such 
predictions either mean nothing, or else they are 
mere loose conjectures, suggested by low spirits or 
disappointment. They are of no philosophic or 
scientilic value ; and though in some cases they may 
give literary expression to moods already existing, 
they will never produce conviction in minds that 
would else be unconvinced. The gift of prophecy 
as to general human history is not a gift that any 
philosophy can bestow. It could only be acquired 
through a superhuman inspiration which is denied 
to man or through a superhuman sagacity which is 
never attained by him. 

The hypothetical pessimism that is contained in 
my arguments is a very different thing from this, and 
far humbler. It makes no foolish attempts to say 
anything general about the present, or anything ab- 



186 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

solute about the future. As to tlie future, it only 
takes tlie absolute things that have been said by 
others ; and not professing any certainty about their 
truth, merely explains their meaning. It deals with a 
certain change in human beliefs, now confidently pre- 
dicted ; but it does not say that this prediction will be 
fulfilled. It says only that if it be, a change, not at 
present counted on, will be effected in human life. 
It says that human life will degenerate if the creed of 
positivism be ever generally accepted ; but it not only 
does not say that it ever will be accepted by every- 
body : rather, it emphatically points out that as yet 
it has been accepted fully by nobody. The positive 
school say that their view of life is the only sound 
one. They boast that it is founded on the rock of 
fact, not on the sand-bank of sentiment ; that it is 
the final philosophy, that will last as long as man 
lasts, and that very soon it will have seen the extinc- 
tion of all the others. It is the positivists who are 
the prophets, not I. My aim has been not to confirm 
the prophecy, but to explain its meaning ; and my 
arguments will be all the more opportune at the 
present moment, the more reason we have to think 
the prophecy false. 

It may be asked why, if we think it false, we 
should trouble our heads about it. And the answer 
to this is to be found in the present age itself. 
Whatever may be the future fate of positive thought, 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 187 

whatever confidence may be felt by any of us that it 
cannot in the long run gain a final hold upon the 
world, its present power and the present results of 
it cannot be overlooked. That degradation of life 
that I have been describing as the result of positivism 
— of what the age we live in calls the only rational 
view of things — may indeed never be completed ; but 
let us look carefully around us, and we shall see that 
it is already begun. The process, it is true, is at 
present not very apparent ; or if it is, its nature is 
altogether mistaken. This, however, only makes it 
more momentous ; and the great reason why it is 
desirable to deal so rudely with the optimist system 
of the positivists is that it lies like a misty veil 
over the real surface of facts, and conceals the very 
change that it professes to make impossible. It is a 
kind of moral chloroform, which, instead of curing an 
illness, only makes us fatally unconscious of its most 
alarming symptoms. 

But though an effort be thus required to realise 
our true condition, it is an effort which, before all 
things, we ought to make ; and which, if we try, we 
can all make readily. A little careful memory, a 
little careful observation, will open the eyes of most 
of us to the real truth of things ; it will reveal to us 
a spectacle that is indeed appalling, and the more 
candidly we survey it, the more shall we feel aghast 
at it. To begin, then, let us once more consider two 



188 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

notorious facts : first, that over all tlie world at the 
present day a denial is spreading itself of all relig- 
ious dogmas, more complete than has ever before 
been known ; and, secondly, that in spite of this 
speculative denial, and in the places where it has 
done its work most thoroughly, a mass of moral 
earnestness seems to survive untouched. I do not 
attempt to deny the fact ; I desire, on the contrary, 
to draw all attention to it. But the condition in 
which it survives is commonly not in the least real- 
ised. The class of men concerned with it are like 
soldiers who may be fighting more bravely perhaps 
than ever ; but who are fighting, though none ob- 
serve it, with the death-wound under their uniforms. 
Of all the signs of the times, these high-minded un- 
believers are thought to be the most reassuring ; but 
really they are the very reverse of this. The reason 
why their true condition has passed unnoticed is, 
that it is a condition that is naturally silent, and 
that has great difficulty in finding a mouthjDiece. 
The only two parties who have had any interest in 
commenting on it have been the very parties least 
able to understand, and most certain to distort it. 
They have been either the professed champions of 
theism, or else the visionary optimists of positivism ; 
the former of whom have had no sympathy with 
positive principles, and the latter no discernment of 
their results. The class of men we are considering 



THE PBACTICAL PROSPECT. jgg 

are equally at variance with both of these ; they 
agree with each in one respect, and in another they 
agree with neither. They agree with the one that 
religions belief is false ; they agree with the other 
that unbelief is miserable. What wonder then that 
they should have kept their condition to them- 
selves ? Nearly all public dealing with it has been 
left to men who can praise the only doctrines that 
they can preach as true, or who else can condemn 
as false the doctrines that they deplore as mischiev- 
ous. As for the others, whose mental and moral 
convictions are at variance, they have neither any 
heart to proclaim the one, nor any intellectual stand- 
point from which to proclaim the other. Their only 
impulse is to struggle and to endure in silence. 
Let us, however, try to intrude upon their privacy, 
even though it be rudely and painfully, and see 
what their real state is ; for it is these men who are 
the true product of the present age, its most special 
and distinguishing feature, and the first-fruits of 
what we are told is to be the i3hilosophy of the en- 
lightened future. 

To begin, then, let us remember what these men 
were when Christians ; and we shall be better able to 
realise what they are now. They were men who be- 
lieved firmly in the supreme and solemn imj^ortance 
of life, in the privilege that it was to live, despite all 
temporal sorrow. They had a rule of conduct which 



190 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

would guide them, they believed, to the true end of 
their being — to an existence satisfying and excellent 
beyond anything that imagination could suggest to 
them ; they had the dread of a corresponding ruin 
to fortify themselves in their struggle against the 
wrong ; and i^ej had a God ever present, to help 
and hear, and take pity on them. And yet even 
thus, selfishness would beset the most unselfish, and 
weariness the most determined. How hard the bat- 
tle was, is known to all ; it has been the most promi- 
nent commonplace in human thought and language. 
The constancy and the strength of temptation, and 
the insidiousness of the arguments it w-as supported 
by, has been proverbial. To explain away the dif- 
ference between good and evil, to subtly steal its 
meaning out of long-sufi'ering and self-denial, and, 
above all, to argue that in sinning '■we shall not 
surely die,'' a work which was supposed to belong 
especially to the devil, has been supposed to have 
been accomplished by him with a success continually 
irresistible. What, then, is likely to be the case 
now, with men who are still beset with the same 
temptations, when not only they have no hell to 
frighten, no heaven to allure, and no God to help 
them ; but when all the arguments that they once 
felt belonged to the father of lies, are pressed on 
them from every side as the most solemn and uni- 
versal truths ? Thus far the result has been a singu- 



THE PBAGTIGAL PROSPECT. 191 

lar one. With an astonisliing vigour the moral im- 
petus still survives the cessation of the forces that 
originated and sustained it ; and in many cases there 
is no diminution of it traceable, so far as action goes. 
This, however, is only true, for the most part, of 
men advanced in years, in whom habits of virtue 
have groAvn strong, and whose age, position, and 
circumstances secure them from strong temptation. 
To see the real work of positive thought we must go 
to younger men, whose characters are less formed, 
whose careers are still before them, and on whom 
temptation of all kinds has stronger hold. We shall 
find such men with the sense of virtue equally vivid 
in them, and the desire to practise it probably far 
more passionate ; but the eifect of positive thought 
on them we shall see to be very different. 

Now, the positive school itself will say that such 
men have all they need. They confessedly have 
conscience left to them — the supernatural moral 
judgment, that is, as applied to themselves — which 
has been analysed, but not destroyed ; and the posi- 
tion of which, we are told, has been changed only by 
its being set on a foundation of fact, instead of a 
foundation of superstition. Mill said that having 
learnt what the sunset clouds were made of, he still 
found that he admired them as much as ever ; ' there- 
fore,'' he said, ^I saw at once that there was nothing 
to he feared from analysis.'' And this is exactly 



192 18 LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

what tlie positive school say of conscience. A 
shallower falsehood, however, it is not easy to con- 
ceive. It is true that conscience in one way may, 
for a time at least, survive any kind of analysis. It 
may continue, with undiminished distinctness, its 
old approvals and menaces. But that alone is noth- 
ing at all to the point. Conscience is of practical 
value, not only because it says certain things, 
but because it says them, as we think, with au- 
thority. If its authority goes, and its advice con- 
tinues, it may indeed molest, but it will no longer 
direct us. Now, though the voice of conscience may, 
as the positive school say, survive their analysis of 
it, its authority will not. That authority has always 
taken the form of a menace, as well as of an appro- 
val ; and the menace at any rate, upon all positive 
principles, is nothing but big words that can break 
no bones. As soon as we realise it to be but this, its 
effect must cease instantly. The power of conscience 
resides not in what we hear it to be, but in what 
we believe it to be. A housemaid may be deterred 
from going to meet her lover in the garden, because 
a howling ghost is believed to haunt the laurels ; but 
she will go to him fast enough when she discovers 
that the sounds that alarmed her were not a soul in 
torture, but the cat in love. The case of conscience 
is exactly analogous to this. 
And now let us turn again to the case in question. 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT I93 

Men of sncli a character as I have been just describ- 
ing may find conscience quite equal to giving a glow, 
by its approval, to their virtuous wishes; but they 
will find it quite unequal to sustaining them against 
their vicious ones ; and the more vigorous the intel- 
lect of the man, the more feeble will be the power of 
conscience. When a man is very strongly tempted 
to do a thing which he believes to be wrong, it is al- 
most inevitable that he will test to the utmost the 
reasons of this belief ; or if he does not do this 
before he yields to the temptation, yet if he does 
happen to yield to it, he will certainly do so after. 
Thus, unless we suppose human nature to be com- 
pletely changed, and all our powers of observation 
completely misleading, the inward condition of the 
class in question is this. However calm the outer 
surface of their lives may seem, under the surface 
there is a continual discord ; and also, though they 
alone may perceive it, a continued decadence. In 
various degrees they all yield to temptation ; all 
men in the vigour of their manhood do ; and con- 
science still fills them with its old monitions and re- 
proaches. But it cannot enforce obedience. They 
feel it to be the truth, but at the same time they 
know it to be a lie ; and though they long to be 
coerced by it, they find it cannot coerce them. Rea- 
son, which was once its minister, is now the tribune 
of their jpassions, and forbids them, in times of 
13 



194 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

passion, to submit to it. Tliey are not suffered to 
forget that it is not what it says it is, that 

It never came from on Jiigh, 
And never rose from helow : 

and they cannot help chiding themselves with the 
irrepressible self-reproach. 

Am I to he overawed 

By what I cannot but know, 
Is a juggle horn of the brain ? 

Thus their conscience, though not stifled, is de- 
throned ; it is become a fugitive Pretender ; and that 
part of them that would desire its restoration is set 
down as an intellectual malignant, powerless indeed 
to restore its sovereign. 

Invalidasque tibi tendens, hen non tua, palmas. 

Conscience, in short, as soon as its jDOwer is needed, 
is like their own selves dethroned within themselves, 
wringing its hands over a rebellion it is powerless to 
suppress. And then, when the storm is over, when 
the passions again subside, and their lives once more 
return to their wonted channels, it can only come 
back humbly and dejected, and give them in a timid 
voice a faint, dishonoured blessing. 

Such lives as these are all of them really in a state 
of moral consumption. The disease in its earlier 
stage is a very subtle one ; and it may not be gener- 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT 195 

ally fatal for years, or even for generations. But it 
is a disease that can be transmitted from parent to 
child ; and its progress is none the less sure because 
it is slow ; nor is it less fatal and painful because it 
may often give a new beauty to the complexion. On 
various constitutions it takes hold in various ways, 
and its presence is first detected by the sufferer un- 
der various trials, and betrayed to the observer by 
various symptoms. What I have just been describ- 
ing is the action that is at the root of it ; but with 
the individual it does not always take that form. 
Often indeed it does ; but of tener still perhaps it is 
discovered not in the helpless yet reluctant yielding 
to vice, but in the sadness and the despondency with 
which virtue is practised — in the dull leaden hours 
of blank endurance or of difficult endeavour ; or in 
the little satisfaction that, when the struggle has 
ceased, the reward of struggle brings with it. 

An earlier, and perhaps more general symptom 
still, is one that is not personal. It consists not in 
the way in which men regard themselves, but in the 
way in which they regard others. In their own case, 
their habitual desire of right, and their habitual 
aversion to wrong, may have been enough to keep 
them from any open breach with conscience, or from 
putting it to an open shame. But its precarious po- 
sition is revealed to them when they turn to others. 
Sin from which they recoil themselves they see com- 



196 J^S LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

mitted in the life around them, and they find that it 
cannot excite the horror or disapproval, which from 
its supposed nature it should. They find themselves 
powerless to pass any general judgment, or to ex- 
tend the law they live by to any beyond themselves. 
The whole prospect that environs them has become 
morally colourless ; and they discern in their atti- 
tude towards the world without, what it must one 
day come to be towards the world within. A state 
of mind like this is no dream. It is a malady of the 
modern world — a malady of our own generation, 
which can escape no eyes that will look for it. It is 
betraying itself every moment around us, in conver- 
sation, in literature, and in legislation. 

Such, then, is the condition of that large and in- 
creasing class on which modern thought is beginning 
to do its work. Its work must be looked for here, 
and not in narrower quarters ; not amongst pro- 
f3Ssors and lecturers, but amongst the busy crowd 
about us ; not on the platforms of institutions, or 
in the lay sermons of specialists, but amongst politi- 
cians, artists, sportsmen, men of business, lovers — 
in HJie tides of life, and in the storm of action'' — 
amongst men who have their own way to force or 
choose in the world, and their daily balance to strike 
between self-denial and pleasure — on whom the posi- 
tive principles have been forced as true, and who 
have no time or talent to do anything else but live 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 197 

by them. It is amongst these that we must look 
to see what such principles really result in ; and of 
these we must choose not those who would welcome 
license, but those who long passionately to live by 
law. It is the condition of such men that I have 
been just describing. Its characteristics are vain 
self-reproach, joyless commendation, weary strug- 
gle, listless success, general indifference, and the 
prospect that if matters are going thus badly with 
them, they will go even worse with their children. 

Such a spectacle certainly is not one that has 
much promise for the optimist ; and the more we 
consider it, the more sad and ominous will it appear 
to us. Indeed, when the present age shall realise its 
own condition truly, the dejection of which it is 
slowly growing conscious may perhaps give way to 
despair. This condition, however, is so portentous 
that it is difficult to persuade ourselves that it is 
what it seems to be, and that it is not a dream. But 
the more steadily we look at it, the more real will its 
appalling features appear to us. We are literally in 
an age to which history can show no parallel, and 
which is new to the experience of humanity ; and 
though the moral dejection we have been dwelling 
on may have had many seeming counterparts in 
other times, this is, as it were, solid substance, 
whereas they were only shadows. I have pointed 
out already in my first chapter how unexampled is 



198 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

the state in whicli the world now finds itself ; but 
we will dwell once again upon its more general fea- 
tures. Within less than a century, distance has been 
all but annihilated, and the earth has practically, 
and to the imagination, been reduced to a fraction 
of its former size. Its possible resources have be- 
come mean and narrow, set before us as matters of 
every-day statistics. All the old haze of wonder is 
melting away from it ; and the old local enthusi- 
asms, which depended so largely on ignorance and 
isolation, are melting likewise. Knowledge has ac- 
cumulated in a way never before dreamed of. The 
fountains of the past seem to have been broken up, 
and to be pouring all their secrets into the conscious- 
ness of the present. For the first time man's wide 
and varied history has become a coherent whole to 
him. Partly a cause and partly a result of this, a 
new sense has sprung up in him — an intense self- 
consciousness as to his own position ; and his en- 
tire view of himself is undergoing a vague change : 
whilst the positive basis on which knowledge has 
been placed, has given it a constant and coercive 
force, and has made the same change common to the 
whole civilised world. Thought and feeling amongst 
the western nations are conforming to a single pat- 
tern : they are losing their old chivalrous character, 
their possibilities of isolated conquest and intellec- 
tual adventure. They are settling down into a uni- 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. I99 

form mass, that moves or stagnates like a modern 
army, and whose alternative lines of march have 
been mapped out beforehand. Such is the condition 
of the western world ; and the western world is be- 
ginning now, at all points, to bear upon the east. 
Thus opinions that the jjresent age is forming for it- 
self have a weight and a volume that opinions never 
before possessed. They are the first beginnings, not 
of natural, or of social, but of human opinion — an 
oecumenical self-consciousness on the part of man as 
to his own prospects and his own position. The 
great question is, what shape finally will this dawn- 
ing self-consciousness take 1 Will it contain in it 
that negation of the supernatural which our positive 
assertions are at present supposed to necessitate ? 
If so, then it is not possible to conceive that this last 
development of humanity, this stupendous break 
from the past which is being accomplished by our 
understanding of it, will not be the sort of break 
which takes place when a man awakes from a dream, 
and finds all that he most prized vanished from him. 
It is impossible to conceive that this awakening, this 
discovery by man of himself, will not be the be- 
ginning of his decadence ; that it will not be the 
discovery on his part that he is a lesser and a loAver 
thing than he thought he was, and that his condi- 
tion will not sink tUl it tallies with his own 
opinion of it. 



200 ^'S' LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

If this be really the case, we shall not be able to 
dispose of pessimism by calling it a disease ; for the 
disease will be real and universal, and pessimism mil 
be nothing but the scientific description of it. The 
pessimist is only silenced by being called diseased, 
when it is meant that the disease imputed to him is 
either hypochondriacal or peculiar to himself. But 
in the present case the disease is real, deep-seated, 
and extending steadily. The only question for us 
is, is it curable or incurable ? This the event alone 
can answer : but as no future can be produced but 
through the agency of the present, the event, to a 
certain extent, must be in our own hands. For us, 
at any rate, the first thing to be done is to face boldly 
our own present condition, and the causes that are 
producing it. To become alive to our danger is the 
one way to escape from it. But the danger is at 
present felt rather than known. The class of men 
we are considering are conscious, as Mr. Matthew 
Arnold says, ' of a void that mines the breast / ' but 
each thinks that this is a fancy only, and hardly 
dares communicate it to his fellows. Here and there, 
however, by accident, it is already finding unintended 
expression ; and signs come to the surface of the 
vague distrust and misgiving that are working under 
it. • The form it takes amongst the general masses 
that are affected by it is, as might be expected, prac- 
tical rather than analytical. They are conscious of 



TEE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 201 

tlie loss tliat the loss of faitli is to tliem ; and more 
or less coherently they long for its recovery. Out- 
wardly, indeed, they may often sneer at it ; but out- 
ward signs in such matters are very deceiving. Much 
of the bitter and arrogant certitude to be found about 
us in the expression of unbelief, is really like the 
bitterness of a woman against her lover, which has 
not been the caiise of her resolving to leave him, but 
which has been caused by his having left her. In 
estimating what is really the state of feeling about 
us, we must not look only at the surface. We must 
remember that deep feeling often expresses itself by 
contradicting itself ; also that it often exists where it 
is not expressed at all, or where it betrays rather 
than expresses itself ; and, further, that during the 
hours of common intercourse, it tends, for the time 
being, to disappear. People cannot be always ex- 
claiming in drawing-rooms that they have lost their 
Lord ; and the fact may be temporarily forgotten 
because they have lost their portmanteau. All se- 
rious reflections are like reflections in water — a pebble 
will disturb them, and make a dull pond sparkle. 
But the sparkle dies, and the reflection comes again. 
And there are many about us, though they never 
confess their pain, and perhaps themselves hardly 
like to acknowledge it, whose hearts are aching for 
the religion that they can no longer believe in. Their 
lonely hours, between the intervals of gaiety, are 



202 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

passed with barren and sombre tliouglits ; and a cry 
rises to their lips but never passes them. 

Amongst such a class it is somehow startling to 
find the most unlikely people at times placing them- 
selves. Professor Clifford, for instance, who of all 
our present positivists is most uproarious in his 
optimism, has yet admitted that the religion he in- 
vites us to trample on is, under certain forms, an 
ennobling and sustaining thing ; and for such theism 
as that of Charles Kingsley's he has expressed his 
deepest reverence. Again, there is Professor Huxley. 
He denies with the most dogmatic and unbending 
severity any right to man to any supernatural faith ; 
and he ' will not for a moment admit ' that our higher 
life will suffer in consequence. ' And yet ' the lomr 
of moral heauty,'' he says wistfully, '■struggling 
tTirougli a world of sorrow and sin, is surely as much 
the stronger for helieving that sooner or later a vision 
of perfect peace and goodness will durst upon him, 
as the toiler up a mountain for the belief that beyond 
crag and snoio lie liome and rest.'' And he adds, as 
we have seen already, that could a faith like what 
he here indicates be placed upon a firm basis, man- 
kind would cling to it as '■ tenaciously as ever a 
drowning sailor did to a hen-coop.'' But all this 

' ' For my own part, I do not for one moment adinit that morality is 
not strong enough to hold its own.' — Prof. Huxley, Nineteenth Century, 
May, 1877. 



THE PMACTICAL PROSPECT. 203 

widespread and increasing feeling is felt at present 
to be of no avaU, The wish to believe is there ; but 
the belief is as far off as ever. There is a power in 
the air around us by which man' s faith seems para- 
lysed. The intellect, we were thinking but now, had 
acquired a new vigour and a clearer vision ; but the 
result of this growth is, with many, to have made it 
an incubus, and it lies upon all their deepest hopes 
and wishes 

Like a weight 
Ileavy as frost, and deep almost as life. 

Such is the condition of mind that is now spread- 
ing rapidly, and which, sooner or later, we must 
look steadily in the face. Nor is it confined to 
those who are its direct victims. Those who still 
cling, and cling firmly, to belief are in an indirect 
way touched by it. Religion cannot fail to be 
changed by the neighbourhood of irreligion. If it 
is persecuted, it may burn up with greater fervour ; 
but if it is not persecuted, it must in some measure 
be chilled. Believers and unbelievers, separated as 
they are by their tenets, are yet in these days mixed 
together in all the acts and relations of life. They are 
united by habits, by blood, and by friendship, and 
they are each obliged continually to ignore or excuse 
what they hold to be the errors of the other. In a 
state of things like this, it is plain that the convic- 



204 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

tion of believers can have neither the fierce intensity 
that belongs to a minority under persecution, nor 
the placid confidence that belongs to an overwhelm- 
ing majority. They can neither hate the unbeliev- 
ers, for they daily live in amity with them, nor de- 
spise altogether their judgment, for the most emi- 
nent thinkers of the day belong to them. By such 
conditions as these the strongest faith cannot fail to 
be affected. As regards the individuals who retain 
it, it may not lose its firmness, but it must lose 
something of its fervour ; and as regards its own fu- 
ture hold upon the human race, it is faith no longer, 
but is anxious doubt, or, at best, a desperate trust. 
Dr. Newman has pointed out how even the Pope 
has recognised in the sedate and ominous rise of 
our modern earth-born positivism some phenomenon 
vaster and of a different nature from the outburst of 
a petulant heresy ; he seems to recognise it as a 
belligerent rather than a rebel.' '•One tiling,^ says 
Dr. l^ewman, ' except hy an almost miraculous inter - 
'position^ cannot de / and tliat is a return to tlie uni- 
versal religious sentiment, the public opinion, of the 
mediaval time. Ttte Pope himself calls those cen- 
turies '•''the ages of faiths Such endemic faith 
may certainly he decreed for some future time ; but 

' These words may no doubt be easily pressed into a sense which. 
Catholics would repudiate. But if not pressed unduly, they repre- 
sent what will, I believe, be admitted to be a fact. 



THE PRACTICAL PROSPECT. 205 

as far as loe Jiave the means of judging at present, 
centuries must run out first. ^ * 

In this last sentence is indicated the vast and uni- 
versal qnestion, which the mind of humanity is 
gathering itself together to ask — will the faith that 
we are so fast losing ever again revive for us ? And 
my one aim in this book has been to demonstrate 
that the entire future tone of life, and the entire 
course of future civilisation, depends on the answer 
which this question receives, 

Tliere is, however, this further point to consider. 
IN'eed the answer we are speaking of be definite and 
universal ? or can we look forward to its remaining 
undecided till the end of time % Now I have already 
tried to make it evident that for the individual, at 
any rate, it must by-and-by be definite one way or 
the other. The thorough positive thinker will not 
be able to retain in supreme power principles which 
have no positive basis. He cannot go on adoring a 
hunger which he knows can never be satisfied, or 
cringing before fears which he knows will never be 
realised. And even if this should for a time be pos- 
sible, his case will be worse, not better. Conscience, 
if it still remains with him, will remain not as a liv- 
ing thing — a severe but kindly guide — but as the 
menacing ghost of the religion he has murdered, and 

' A letter to the Duke of Norfolk, by J. H. Newman, D.D., p. 35. 
Pickering: 1875. 



206 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING! 

wliicli comes to embitter degradation, not to raise it. 
The moral life, it is true, will still exist for him, but 
it will probably, in literal truth, 

Creep on a 'broken wing 
Througli cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear. 

But a state of things like this can hardly be looked 
forward to as conceivably of any long continuance. 
Keligion would come back, or conscience would go. 
Nor do I think that the future which Dr. Newman 
seems to anticipate can be regarded as probable 
either. He seems to anticipate a continuance side 
by side of faith and positivism, each with their own 
adherents, and fighting a ceaseless battle in which 
neither gains the victory. I venture to submit that 
the new forms now at work in the world are not 
forms that will do their work by halves. When 
once the age shall have mastered them, they will be 
either one thing or the other — they will be either 
impotent or omnipotent. Their public exponents at 
present boast that they will be omnipotent ; and 
more and more the world about us is beginning to 
believe the boast. But the world feels uneasily that 
the import of it will be very different from what we 
are assured it is. One English writer, indeed, on the 
positive side, has already seen clearly what the 
movement really means, whose continuance and 
whose consummation he declares to us to be a neces- 



TEE PBACTICAL PROSPECT. 207 

sity. ''Nemr^^ lie says, ' in the liistory of man has 
so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which 
all who loolc may now behold., advancing as a deluge., 
black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting 
our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most pre- 
cious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless 
desolation.'^ ' 

The question I shall now proceed to is the exact 
causes of this movement, and the chances and the 
powers that the human race has of resisting it. 

1 A Candid Examination of Theism, By Physicus. Triibner & Co. : 

1878. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC JSTEGATIOlSr. 

/ am Sir Oracle, 
And iclien I ope my mouth let no dog hark. 

Before beginning to analyse the forces that are 
decomposing religious belief, it will be well to remark 
briefly on the means by which these forces are ap- 
plied to the world at large. To a certain extent they 
are applied directly ; that is, many of the facts that 
are now becoming obvious the common sense of all 
men assimilates spontaneously, and derives, unbid- 
den, its own doubts or denials from them. But the 
chief power of positivism is derived otherwise. It is 
derived not directly from the premisses that it puts 
before us, but from the intellectual prestige of its ex- 
ponents, who, to the destruction of private judgment, 
are forcing on us their own personal conclusions from 
them. This prestige, indeed, is by no means to be 
wondered at. If men ever believed a teacher ''for Ms 
works^ sake,'' the positive school is associated with 
enough signs and wonders. All those astonishing 
powers that man has acquired in this century are 
with much justice claimed by it as its works and gifts. 
The whole sensuous surroundings of our lives are its 

208 



TEE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 209 

subjects, and are doing it daily homage ; and there is 
not a conquest over distance, disease, or darkness 
that does not seem to bear witness to its intellectual 
supremacy. The opinion, therefore, that is now 
abroad in the world is that the positive school are 
the monopolists of unbiassed reason ; that reason, 
therefore, is altogether fatal to religion ; and that 
those who deny this, only do so through ignorance 
or through wilful blindness. As long as this opinion 
lasts, the revival of faith is hopeless. What we are 
now about to examine is, how far this opinion is well 
founded. 

The arguments which operate against religion with 
the leaders of modern thought, and through their in- 
tellectual example on the world at large, divide them- 
selves into three classes, and are derived from three 
distinct branches of thought and study. They may 
be distinguished as physical, moral, and historical. 
Few of these arguments, taken separately, can be 
called altogether new. Their new power has been 
caused by the simultaneous filling up and comple- 
tion of all of them ; by their transmutation from filmy 
visions into massive and vast realities ; from unau- 
thorised misgivings into the most rigid and compel- 
ling of demonstrations : and still more, by the bril- 
liant and sudden annihilation of the most obvious 
difficulties, which till very lately had neutralised and 

held their power in check. 
14 



210 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

Of these three sets of arguments, tlie two first bear 
upon all religion, whilst the third bears upon it only 
as embodied in some exclusive form. Thus the phy- 
sicist argues, for example, that consciousness being a 
function of the brain, unless the universe be a single 
brain itself, there can be no conscious God.^ The 
moral philosopher argues that sin and misery being 
so prevalent, there can be no Almighty and all-mer- 
ciful God. And the historian argues that all alleged 
revelations can be shown to have had analogous his- 
tories ; and that therefore, even if God exists, there 
is no one religion through which He has specially re- 
vealed Himself. These are rough specimens solubly, 
so far as observation can carry us, mind with mat- 
ter. The great gulf between the two has at last been 
spanned. The bridge across it, that was so long seen 
in dreams and despaired of, has been thrown trium- 
phantly — a solid compact fabric, on which a hundred 
intellectual masons are still at work, adding stone on 
ponderous stone to it. Science, to put the matter in 
other words, has accomplished these three things. 
Firstly, to use the words of a well-known writer, ' it 
lias establisTied afunctional relation to exist between 
every fact of thinJcing, willing, or feeling, on tTie one 
side, and some molecular change in the body on the 
other side? Secondly, it has connected, through 
countless elusive stages, this organic hiiman body 

^ The argument has been used in this exact form by Professor Clifford. 



THE LOGIC OF 8CIENTIFIG NEGATION. gH 

with the universal lifeless matter. And thirdly, it 
claims to have placed the universal matter itself in a 
new position for us, and to exhibit all forms of life as 
developed from it, through its own spontaneous mo- 
tion. Thus for the first time, beyond the reach of 
question, the entire sensible universe is brought with- 
in the scope of the physicist. Everything that is, is 
matter moving. Life itself is nothing but motion of 
an infinitely complex kind. It is matter in its finest 
ferment. The first traceable beginnings of it are to 
be found in the phenomenon of crystallisation ; we 
have there, we are told by the highest scientific au- 
thority, ' the first growings of tlie so-called vital 
force / ' and we learn from the same quarter, that be- 
tween these and the brain of Christ there is a differ- 
ence in degree only, not in kind : they are each of 
them ' an assemblage of molecules, acting and re-act- 
ing according to law? ' We believe,'' says Dr. Tyndall, 
' that every thought and every feeling has its definite 
mechanical correlative — that it is accompanied by a 
certain breaking up and re-marshalling of the atoms 
of the brain.'' And though he of course admits that 
to trace out the processes in detail is infinitely be- 
yond our powers, yet ' the quality of the problem and 
of our powers, ' he says, ^ are, we believe, so related, 
that a mere expansion of the latter would enable them 
to cope with the former.' Nowhere is there any break 
in N^ature ; and '■supposing,' in Dr. Tyndall' s words. 



212 J^3 LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

' a planet carxed from the sun, set spinning on an 
axis, and sent revolving round the sun at a distance 
equal to that of out earth,'' science points to tlie con- 
clusion that as tlie mass cooled, it would flower out 
in places into just such another race as ours — crea- 
tures of as large discourse, and, like ourselves, look- 
ing before and after. The result is obvious. Every 
existing thing that we can ever know, or hope to 
know, in the whole inward as well as in the Avhole 
outward world — everything from a star to a thought, 
or from a flower to an affection, is connected with cer- 
tain material figures, and with certain mechanical 
forces. All have a certain bulk and a certain place 
in space, and could conceivably be made the subjects 
of some physical exj)eriment. Faith, sanctity, doubt, 
sorrow, and love, could conceivably be all gauged 
and detected by some scientific instrument — by a 
camera or by a spectroscope ; and their conditions 
and their intensity be represented by some sort of di- 
agram. 

These marvellous achievements, as I have said, 
have been often before dreamed of. ISTow they are 
accomplished. As applied to natural religion, the 
effect of them is as follows. 

Firstly, with regard to God, they have taken away 
every external proof of His existence, and, still 
more, every sign of His daily providence. They de- 
stroy them completely at a sudden and single blow, 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 213 

and send tliem falling about us like so many dead 
flies. God, as connected with the external world, 
w^as conceived of in three ways — as a Mover, as a 
Designer, and as a Superintendent. In the first two 
capacities He was required by thought ; in the last. 
He w^as supposed to be revealed by experience. But 
now in none of these is He required or revealed lon- 
ger. So far as thought goes, He has become a su- 
perfluity ; so far as experience goes, He has become 
a fanciful suggestion. 

Secondly, with regard to man, the life and soul 
are presented to us, not as an entity distinct from 
the body, and therefore capable of surviving it, but 
as a function of it, or the sum of its functions, which 
has demonstrably grown with its growth, which is 
demonstrably dependent upon even its minutest 
changes, and which, for any sign or hint to the con- 
trary, will be dissolved with its dissolution. 

A God, therefore, that is the master of matter, and 
a human soul that is independent of it — any second 
world, in fact, of alien and trans-material forces, is 
reduced, on physical grounds, to an utterly unsup- 
ported hypothesis. Were this all, however, it would 
logically have on religion no effect at all. It would 
sujDply us with nothing but the barren verbal propo- 
sition that the immaterial was not material, or that 
we could find no trace of it by merely studying mat- 
ter. Its whole force rests on the following sup- 



2-14 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

pressed premiss, that nothing exists but what the 
study of matter conceivably could reveal to us ; or 
that, in other words, the immaterial equals the non- 
existent. The case stands thus. The forces of 
thought and spirit were supposed formerly to be 
quite distinct from matter, and to be capable of act- 
ing without the least connection with it. ISTow, it is 
shown that every smallest revelation of these to us, 
is accomplished by some local atomic movement, 
which, on a scientific instrument fine enough, would 
leave a distinct impression ; and thus it is argued 
that no force is revealed through matter that is not 
inseparable from the forms revealing it. Here we 
see the meaning of that great modern axiom, that 
verification is the test of truth ; or that we can build 
on nothing as certain but what we can prove true. 
The meaning of the word ''proofs by itself may per- 
haps be somewhat hazy ; but the meaning that posi- 
tive science attaches to it is plain enough. A fact 
is only proved when the evidence it rests upon leaves 
us no room for doubt — when it forces on every mind 
the same invincible conviction ; that is, in other 
words, when, directly or indirectly, its material 
equivalent can be impressed upon our bodily senses. 
This is the fulcrum of the modern intellectual 
lever. Ask anyone oppressed and embittered by the 
want of religion the reason why he does not again em- 
brace it, and the answer will still be this — that there 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 215 

is no proof that it is tn^e. Granting, says Professor 
Huxley, that a religious creed would be beneficial, ' my 
next step is to ask for a proof of its dogmas. ' And 
with contemptuous passion another well-known writer, 
Mr. Leslie Stephen, has classified all beliefs, accord- 
ing as we can prove or not prove them, into realities 
and empty dreams. ' The ignorant and cliildisli,^ he 
says, ' are hopelessly unable to draw the line between 
dreamland and reality ; but the imagery which 
takes its rise in the imagination as distinguished 
from the perceptions., bears indelible traces of its 
origin in comparative unsubstantiality and vague- 
ness of outline.'' And ^now^'' he exclaims, turning 
to the generation around him, ' at last your creed is 
decaying. People have discovered that you know 
nothing about it ; that heaven and hell belong to 
dreamland ; that the impertinent young curate who 
tells me that I shall be burnt everlastingly for not 
sharing It is superstition, is just as ignorant as I 
myself, and that I know as much as my dog.'' ' 

Such is that syllogism of the physical sciences 
which is now supposed to be so invincible against all 
religion, and which has already gone so far towards 
destroying the world's faith in it. Now as to the 
minor premiss, that there is no proof of religion, we 
may concede, at least provisionally , that it is com- 
pletely true. What it is really important to examine 

^ Dreams and Realities, by Leslie Stephen. 



216 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

is the major premiss, that we can be certain of noth- 
ing that we cannot support by proof. This it is plain 
does not stand on the same footing as the former, for 
it is of its very nature not capable of being proved 
itself. Its foundation is something far less definable 
— the general character for wisdom of the leading 
thinkers who have adopted it, and the general ac- 
ceptance of its consequences by the common sense of 
mankind. 

ISTow if we examine its value by these tests, the 
result will be somewhat startling. We find that not 
only are mankind at large as yet but very partially 
aware of its consequences, but that its true scope and 
meaning has not even dawned dimly on the leading 
thinkers themselves. Few spectacles, indeed, in 
the whole history of thought are more ludicrous 
than that of the modern positive school with their 
great doctrine of verification. They apply it rigor- 
ously to one set of facts, and then utterly fail to see 
that it is equally applicable to another. They apply 
it to religion, and declare that the dogmas of religion 
are dreams ; but when they pass from the dogmas 
of religion to those of morality, they not only do 
not use their test, but unconsciously they denounce 
it with the utmost vehemence. Thus Mr. Leslie 
Stephen, in the very essay from which I have just 
now quoted, not only has recourse, for giving weight 
to his arguments, to such ethical epithets as low, 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 217 

lofty, and even sacred, but he puts forward as his own 
motive for speaking, a belief which on his own show- 
ing is a dream. That motive, he says, is devotion to 
truth for its own sake — the only principle that is 
really worthy of man. His argument is simply this. 
It is man's holiest and most important duty to dis- 
cover the truth at all costs, and the one test of truth 
is physical verification. Here he tells us we find 
the only high morality, and the men who cling to 
religious dream-dogmas which they cannot physic- 
ally verify, can only answer their opponents, says 
Mr. Stephen, ' hy a sliriek or a sneer.'' ' Tlie senti- 
ment,^ he proceeds, '■which the dreamer most thor- 
oughly hates and misunderstands, is the love of 
truth for its oion saTce. He cannot conceive why a 
man should attack a lie simply because it is a lie.'' 
Mr. Stephen is wrong. That is exactly what the 
dreamer can do, and no one else but he ; and Mr. 
Stej)hen is himself a dreamer when he writes and 
feels like this. Why, let me ask him, should the 
truth be loved \ Do the '"perceptions, ' which are for 
him the only valid guides, tell him so % The per- 
ceptions tell him, as he expressly says, that the 
truths of nature, so far as man is concerned with 
them, are ' harsh ' truths. Why should ' harsh ' 
things be loveable % Or supposing Mr. Stephen does 
love them, why is that love ' lofty ' ? and why should 
he so brusquely command all other men to share it % 



218 IS LIFE WOETII LIVING? 

Low and lofty — what lias Mr. Stephen to do witli 
words like these 1 They are part of the language of 
dreamland, not of real life. Mr. Stephen has no right 
to them. If he has, he must be able to draw a hard 
and fast line between them ; for if his conceptions of 
them be ' league in outline'' and ' unsubstantial,'' they 
belong by his own express definition to the land of 
dreams. But this is what Mr. Stephen, with the 
solemn imbecility of his school, is quite incapable of 
seeing. Professor Huxley is in. exactly the same 
case. He says, as we have seen already, that, come 
what may of it, our highest morality is to follow 
truth; that the ''lowest depth of immorality'' is to 
pretend to believe what we see no reason for believ- 
ing ; ' and that our only proper reasons for belief are 
some physical, some perceptible evidence. And yet 
at the same time he says that to ' attempt to upset 
morality^ by the help of the physical sciences is 
about as rational or as possible as to ' attempt to upset 
Euclid by the lielp of the Rig Veda. ' N'o w on Pro- 
fessor Huxley' s principles, this last sentence, though 
it sounds very weighty, is, if so ungracious a word 
may be allowed me, nothing short of nonsense. It 
would be the lowest depth of immorality, he says, to 
believe in God, when we see that there is no physical 
evidence to justify the belief. And physical "science 
in this way he admits — he indeed proclaims — has 
upset religion. How then has physical science in 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 219 

the same way failed to upset morality 1 The founda- 
tion of morality, he says, is the belief that truth for 
its own sake is sacred. But what proof can he dis- 
cover of this sacredness ? Does any positive method 
of experience or observation so much as tend to sug- 
gest it? We have already seen that it does not. 
What Professor Huxley's i^hilosophy really proves 
to him is that it is true that nothing is sacred ; not 
that it is a sacred thing to discover the truth. 

We saw all this already when we were examining 
his comparison of the perception of moral beauty to 
the perception of the heat of ginger. It is the same 
thing with which we are again dealing now, only we 
are approaching it from a slightly different point of 
view. What we saw before, was that without an 
assent to the religious dogmas, the moral dogmas 
can have no logical meaning. We have now seen 
that even were the two logically independent, they 
yet belong both of them to the same order of things ; 
and that if our tests of truth prove the former to be 
illusions, they will, with precisely the same force, 
prove the same thing of the latter. 

But the most crucial test of all we have still to 
come to, which will put this conclusion in a yet 
clearer and a more unmistakable light. Thus far 
what we have seen has amounted to only this — that 
if science can take from man his religious faith, it 
leaves him a being without any moral guidance. 



220 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

What we shall now see is that, by the same argu- 
ments, it will prove him to be not a moral being at 
all ; that it will prove not only that he has no rule 
by which to direct his will, but also that he has no 
will to direct. 

To understand this we must return to physical 
science, and to the exact results that have been ac- 
complished by it. AVe have seen how completely, 
from one point of view, it has connected mind with 
matter, and how triumphantly it is supposed to have 
unified the apparent dualism of things. It has re- 
vealed the brain to us as matter in a combination of 
infinite complexity, which it has reached at last 
through its own automatic workings ; and it has 
revealed consciousness to us as a function of tliis 
brain, and as altogether inseparable from it. But 
for this, the old dualism now supposed to be obsolete 
would remain undisturbed. Indeed, if this doctrine 
were denied, such a dualism would be the only alter- 
native. For every thought, then, that we think, and 
every feeling or desire that we feel, there takes place 
in the brain some definite material movement, on the 
force or figure of which the thoughts and feelings are 
dependent. Now if physical observations are to be 
the only things that guide us, one important fact 
will become at once evident. Matter existed and 
fermented long before the evolution of mind ; mind 
is not an exhibition of new forces, but the outcome 



TEE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION: 221 

of a special combination of old. Mental facts are 
therefore essentially dependent on molecular facts ; 
molecular facts are not dependent on mental. They 
may seem to be so, but this is only seeming. They 
are as much the outcome of molecular groupings and 
movements as the figures in a kaleidoscope are of 
the groupings and movements of the colored bits of 
glass. They are things entirely by the way ; and 
they can as little be considered links in any chain of 
causes as can the figure in a kaleidoscope be called 
the cause of the figure that succeeds it. 

The conclusion, however, is so distasteful to most 
men, that but few of them can be brought even to 
face it, still less to accept it. There is not a single 
physicist of eminence — none at least who has spoken 
publicly on the moral aspects of life — who has 
honestly and fairly considered it, and said plainly 
whether he accepts it, rejects it, or is in doubt about 
it. On the contrary, instead of meeting this ques- 
tion, they all do their best to avoid it, and to hide it 
from themselves and others in a vague haze of mys- 
tery. And there is a peculiarity in the nature of the 
subject that has made this task an easy one. But 
the dust they have raised is not impenetrable, and 
can, with a little patience, be laid altogether. 

The phenomenon of consciousness is in one way 
unique. It is the only phenomenon with which 
science comes in contact, of which the scientific 



222 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

imagination cannot form a coherent picture. It lias 
a side, it is true, tliat we can picture well enough — 
' the tlirilUng of the nerves,^ as Dr. Tyndall says, 
' the discharging of the muscles, and all the subse- 
quent changes of the organism.^ But of how these 
changes come to have another side, we can form no 
picture. This, it is perfectly true, is a complete 
mystery. And this mystery it is that our modern 
physicists seize on, and try to hide and lose in the 
shadow of it a conclusion which they admit that, in 
any other case, a rigorous logic would force on them. 
The following is a typical example of the way in 
which they do this. It is taken from Dr. Tyndall. 
^ The mechanical philosopher, as such,^ he says, 
^will never place a state of consciousness and a 
group of molecules in the position of mover and 
moved. Observation proves them to interact ; but in 
passing from one to the other, we meet a blank loliich 
the logic of deduction is unable to fill. . . . I 
lay bare unsparingly the initial dirfficulty of the 
materialist, and tell him that the facts of observa- 
tion lolilcli he considers so simple are '■'•almost 
as difficult to he seized as the idea of a soul.'''' I go 
further, and say in effect : '"'' If you abandon the in- 
terpretation of grosser minds, loho image the soul 
as a Psyche which could be throion out of the win- 
doiD — an entity lohlch is usually occupied we 'know 
not how, among the molecules of the brain, but which 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 223 

on due occasion, such as the intrusion of a bullet, 
or the blow of a club, can fly a.way into other regions 
of space — if abandoning this heathen notion you 
approach the subject in the only loay in which ap- 
proach is possible — If you consent to inalie your 
soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which — as 
I have talcen tnore pains than anyone else to show 
you — refuses the ordinary yoke of physical laws, 
then I, for one, would not object to this exercise of 
ideality. ^^ I say it strongly, but with good temper, 
that the theologian who hacks and scourges nie for 
putting the matter in this light is guilty of black 
ingratitude.'^ 

Now if we examine this very typical passage, we 
shall see that in it are confused two questions which, 
as regards our own relation to them, are on a totally 
different footing. One of these questions cannot be 
answered at all. The other can be answered in dis- 
tinct and opposite ways. About the one we must 
rest in wonder ; about the other we must make a 
choice. And the feat which our modern physicists 
are trying to perform is to hide the importunate 
nature of the second in the dark folds of the first. 
This first question is. Why should consciousness be 
connected with the brain at all % The second ques- 
tion is. What is it when connected ? Is it simply the 
product of the brain's movement ; or is tlie brain's 
movement in any degree produced by it \ We only 



224 JS LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

know it, so to speak, as the noise made by the work- 
ing of the brain' s macliinery — as tlie crash, the roar, 
or the whisper of its restless colliding molecules. Is 
this machinery self-moving, or is it, at least, modu- 
lated, if not moved, by some force other than itself ? 
The brain is the organ of consciousness, just as the 
instrument called an organ is an organ of music : 
and consciousness itself is as a tune emerging from the 
organ-pipes. Expressed in terms of this metaphor 
our two questions are as follows. The first is. Why, 
when the air goes through them, are the organ-pipes 
resonant ? The second is. What controls the mech- 
anism by which the air is regulated — a musician, or 
a revolving barrel ? !N'ow what our modern physicists 
fail to see is, not only that these two questions are 
distinct in detail, but that also they are distinct in 
kind ; that a want of power to answer them means, 
in the two cases, not a distinct thing only, but also 
an opposite thing ; and that our confessed impo- 
tence to form any conjecture at all as to the first, 
does not in the least exonerate us from choosing be- 
tween conjectures as to the second. 

As to the first question, our discovery of the fact 
it is concerned with, and our utter inability to ac- 
count for this fact, has really no bearing at all upon 
the great dilemma — the dilemma as to the unity or 
the dualism of existence, and the independence or 
automatism of the life and will of man. All that 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 225 

science tells us on this first head the whole world 
may agree with, with the utmost readiness ; and if 
any theologian ' hacks and scourges ' Dr. Tyndall for 
his views thus far, he must, beyond all doubt, be a 
very foolish theologian indeed. The whole bearing 
of this matter modern science seems to confuse and 
magnify, and it fancies itself assaulted by opponents 
who in reality have no existence. Let a man be 
never so theological, and never so pledged to a faith 
in myths and mysteries, he would not have the least 
interest in denying that the brain, though we know 
not how, is the only seat for us of thought and mind 
and spirit. Let him have never so firm a faith in 
life immortal, yet this immortal has, he knows, put 
on mortality, through an inexplicable contact with 
matter ; and his faith is not in the least shaken by 
learning that this point of contact is the brain. He 
can admit with the utmost readiness that the brain 
is the only instrument through which supernatural 
life is made at the same time natural life. He can 
admit that the moral state of a saint might be de- 
tected by some form of spectroscope. At first sight, 
doubtless, this may appear somewhat startling ; but 
there is nothing really in it that is either strange or 
formidable. Dr. Tyndall says that the view indi- 
cated can, ''lie thinks,'' be maintained '' against all 
attack.^ But why he should apprehend any attack 
at all, and why he should only ' think ' it would be 
15 



7^ LIFE WOETH LIVING? 

"unsuccessful, it is somewhat liard to conceive. To say 
that a spectroscope as applied to the brain might 
conceivably detect such a thing as sanctity, is little 
more than to say that our eyes as applied to the face 
can actually detect such a thing as anger. There is 
nothing in that doctrine to alarm the most mystical 
of believers. In the completeness with which it is 
now brought before us it is doubtless new and won- 
derful, and will doubtless tend presently to clarify 
human thought. But no one need fear to accept it 
as a truth ; and probably before long w^e shall all 
accept it as a truism. It is not denying the exist- 
ence of a soul to say that it cannot move in matter 
without leaving some impress in matter, any more 
than it is denying the existence of an organist to 
say that he cannot play to us without striking the 
notes of his organ. Dr. Tyndall then need hardly 
have used so much emj)hasis and iteration in affirm- 
ing that ' every thoiigM and feeling has its definite 
mechanical correlative, that it is accompanied hy a 
certain hrealclng-icp and remarshalling of the atoms 
of the brain. ' And he is no more likely to be ' haclced 
and scourged ' for doing so than he would be for af- 
firming that every note we hear in a piece of music 
has its definite correlative in the mechanics of the 
organ, and that it is accompanied by a depression 
and a rising again of some particular key. In his 
views thus far the whole world may agree with him ; 



TEE LOQIG OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 221 

whilst when he adds so emphatically that in these 
views there is still involved a mystery, we shall not 
so much say that the world agrees with him as that 
he, like a good sensible man, agrees with the world. 
The passage from mind to matter is. Dr. Tyndall 
says, unthinkable. The common sense of mankind 
has always said the same. We have here a some- 
thing, not which we are doubtful how to explain, 
but which we cannot explain at all. We have not 
to choose or halt between alternative conjectures, 
for there are absolutely no conjectures to halt be- 
tween. We are now, as to this point, in the same 
state of mind in which we have always been, only 
this state of mind has been revealed to us more 
clearly. We are in theoretical ignorance, but we 
are in no practical perplexity. 

The perplexity comes in with the second question ; 
and it is here that the issue lies between the affirma- 
tion and the denial of a second and a supernatural 
order. We will see, first, how this question is put 
and treated by Dr. Tyndall, and we will then ses 
what his treatment comes to. Is it true, he asks, as 
many physicists hold it is, '■that the pliysical pro- 
cesses are complete in themsel'ves^ and would go on 
just as they do if consciousness were not at all im- 
plicated,'^ as an engine might go on working though 
it made no noise, or as a barrel-organ might go on 
playing even though there were no ear to listen to 



228 J'S LIFE WOBTH LIVING ? 

it? Or do ^states of consciousness enter as linTcs 
into the chain of antecedence and sequence which 
gillies rise to bodily actions f ' Siicli is the question 
in Dr. Tyndall' s own phrases ; and here, in his own 
phrases also, comes his answer. ^ IJiave no power, ^ 
he says, ' of imagining such states interposed be- 
tween the molecules of the brain, and influencing 
the transference of motion among the molecules. 
The thing eludes all mental presentation. But,'' he 
, adds, ' the production of consciousness by molecular 
Tnotion is qiiite as unpresentable to the mental msion 
as the production of molecular motion by conscious- 
ness. If I reject one result, I reject both. I, however, 
reject neither, and thus stand in the presence of two 
Jncomprehensibles, instead of one Incomprehensible.'^ 
Now what does all this mean ? There is one mean- 
ing of which the words are capable, which would 
make them perfectly clear and coherent ; but that 
meaning, as we shall see presently, cannot possibly 
be Dr. Tyndall' s. They would be perfectly clear 
and coherent if he meant this by them — that the 
brain was a natural instrument, in the hands of a 
supernatural player ; but that why the instrument 
should be able to be played upon, and how the 
player should be able to play upon it, were both 
matters on which he could throw no light. But 
elsewhere he has told us expressly that he does not 
mean this. This he expressly says is ' the interpre- 



THE LOGIC OF 8CIEMTIFIC NEGATION. 229 

tation of grosser minds,'' and science will not for 
a moment permit us to retain it. The brain con- 
tains no ' entity usually occupied we Tcnow not how 
amongst its molecules,^ but at tlie same time separa- 
ble from them. According to liim, this is a ^hea- 
then'' notion, and, until we abandon it, '■no ap- 
proach,'' he says, Ho the subject is possible.' What 
does he mean, then, when he tells us he rejects 
neither result ; when he tells us that he believes that 
molecular motion produces consciousness, and also 
that consciousnsss in its turn produces molecular 
motion ? — when he tells us distinctly of these two 
that ' ohsei^vation proxies them to interact ' f If such 
language as this means anything, it must have ref- 
erence to two distinct forces, one material and the 
other immaterial. Indeed, does he not himself say 
so \ Does he not tell us that one of the beliefs he 
does not reject is the belief in ' states of conscious- 
ness interposed between the molecules of the brain ^ 
and inUuencing tfie transference of motion among 
the molecules ' f It is perfectly clear, then, that 
these states are not molecules ; in other words, they 
are not material. But if not material, what are they, 
acting on matter, and yet distinct from matter? 
What can they belong to but that ' heathen ' thing 
the soul — that ' entity which could be thrown out of 
the window' and which, as Dr. Tyndall has said 
elsewhere, science forbids us to believe in % Surely 



230 13 LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

for an exact thinker this is thought in strange con- 
fusion. 'Matter,^ he says, ^ I define as tJiat myste- 
rious something hy which all this is accomplished ; ' 
and yet here we find him, in the face of this, invok- 
ing some second mystery as well. And for what 
reason \ This is the strangest thing of all. He be- 
lieves in his second Incomprehensible because he be- 
lieves in his first Incomprehensible. ' If I reject 
one result,'' he says, ' /must reject both. I, however, 
reject neither. ' But why ? Because one undoubted 
fact is a mystery, is every mystery an undoubted 
fact ? Such is Dr. Tyndall's logic in this remarkable 
utterance : and if this logic be valid, we can at once 
prove to him the existence of a personal God, and a 
variety of other ' heathen ' doctrines also. But, ap- 
plied in this way, it is evident that the argument 
fails to move him ; for a belief in a personal God is 
one of the first things that his science rejects. What 
shall we say of him, then, when he applies the argu- 
ment in his own way ? We can say simply this — 
that his mind for the time being is in a state of such 
confusion, that he is incapable really of clearly 
meaning anything. What his position logically 
must be— what, on other occasions, he clearly avows 
it to be — is plain enough. It is essentially that of a 
man confronted by one Incomjprehensible, not con- 
fronted by two. But, looked at in certain ways, or 
rather looked /7'o??2, in certain ways, this position 



TEE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 231 

seems to stagger him. The problem of existence 
reels and grows dim before him, and he fancies that 
he detects the presence of two Incomprehensibles, 
when he has really, in his state of mental insobriety, 
only seen one Incomprehensible double. If this be 
not the case, it must be one that, intellectually, is even 
weaker than this. It must be that, not of a man with a 
single coherent theory which his intellect in its less 
vigorous moments sometimes relaxes its hold upon, 
but it must be that of a man with two hostile theories 
which he vainly imagines to be one, and which he 
inculcates alternately, each with an equal emphasis. 

If this bewilderment were peculiar to Dr. Tyndall, 
I should have no motive or meaning in thus dwelling 
on it. But it is no peculiarity of his. It is charac- 
teristic of the whole school he belongs to ; it is in- 
herent in our whole modern positivism — the whole of 
our exact and enlightened thought. I merely choose 
Dr. Tyndall as my example, not because there is 
more confusion in his mind than there is in that of 
his fellow-physicists, but because he is, as it were, the 
enfant terrible of his family, who publicly lets out the 
secrets which the others are more careful to conceal. 

But I have not done with this matter yet. We 
are here dealing with the central problem of things, 
and we must not leave it till we have made it as 
plain as possible. I will therefore re-state it in 
terms of another metajDlior. Let us compare the 



232 J^s LIFE woBTii Livma? 

universal matter, with its infinity of molecules, to a 
number of balls on a billiard-table, set in motion by 
the violent stroke of a cue. The balls at once begin 
to strike each other and rebound from the cushions 
at all angles and in all directions, and assume with 
regard to each other positions of every kind. At 
last six of them collide or cannon in a particular 
corner of the table, and thus group themselves so as 
to form a human brain ; and their various changes 
thereafter, so long as the brain remains a brain, rep- 
resent the various changes attendant on a man's 
conscious life. Now in this life let us take some 
moral crisis. Let us suppose the low desire to cling 
to some pleasing or comforting superstition is con- 
tending with the heroic desire to face the naked 
truth at all costs. The man in question is at first 
about to yield to the low desire. For a time there 
is a painful struggle in him. At last there is a sharp 
decisive pang ; the heroic desire is the conquerer, 
the superstition is cast away, and ' though truth slay 
??^e,' says the man, ^ yet will I trust in it.'' Such is 
the aspect of the question when approached from 
one side. But w^hat is it w^hen approached from the 
other ? The six billiard balls have simply changed 
their places. When they corresponded to low de- 
sire, they formed, let us say, an oval ; when they 
corresponded to the heroic desire, they formed, let us 
say, a circle. Now what is the cause and what the 



THE LOGIC OF SCIEN'TIFIG NEGATION. 233 

conditions of this change 'i Clearly a certain impe- 
tus imparted to the balls, and certain fixed laws 
Tinder which that impetus operates. The question 
is what laws and what impetus are these 1 Are they 
the same or not the same, now the balls correspond 
to consciousness, as they were before, when the 
balls did not correspond to it ? One of two things 
must happen. Either the balls go on moving by 
exactly the same laws and forces they have always 
moved by, and are in the grasp of the same invinci- 
ble necessity, or else there is some new and disturb- 
ing force in the midst of them, with whicli we have 
to reckon. But if consciousness is inseparable from 
matter, this cannot be. Do the billiard-balls when 
so grouped as to represent consciousness generate 
some second motive power distinct from, at variance 
with, and often stronger than, the original impetus? 
Clearly no scientific thinker can admit this. To do 
so would be to undermine the entire fabric of science, 
to contradict what is its first axiom and its last con- 
clusion. If then the motion of oar six billiard balls 
has anything, when it corresponds to consciousness, 
distinct in kind from what it always had, it can 
only derive this from one cause. That cause is a 
second cue, tampering with the balls and interfering 
with them, or even more than this — a second hand 
taking them up and arranging them arbitrarily in 
certain figures. 



234 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

Science places tlie positive school on the horns of 
a dilemma. The mind or spirit is either arranged 
entirely by the molecules it is connected with, and 
these molecules move with the same automatic 
necessity that the earth moves with ; or else these 
molecules are, partially at least, arranged by the 
mind or spirit. If we do not accept the former 
theory we must accept the latter : there is no third 
course open to us. If man is not an automaton, his 
consciousness is no mere function of any physical 
organ. It is an alien and disturbing element. Its 
impress on physical facts, its disturbance of phys- 
ical laws, may be doubtless the only things through 
which we can perceive its existence ; but it is as dis- 
tinct from the things by which we can alone at pres- 
ent perceive it, as a hand unseen in the dark, that 
should arrest or change the course of a phospho- 
rescent billiard-ball. Once let us deny even in the 
most qualified way that the mind in the most abso- 
lute way is a material machine, an automaton, and 
in that denial we are affirming a second and imma- 
terial universe, independent of the material, and 
obeying different laws. But of this universe, if it 
exists, no natural proof can be given, because ex 
Jiypotliesi it lies quite beyond the region of nature. 

One theory then of man' s life is that it is a union 
of two orders of things ; another, that it is single, and 
belongs to only one. And of these theories — oppo- 



THE LOOIC OF 8GIENTIFIG NEOATION. 235 

site, and mutually exclusive, Dr. Tyndall, and 
modern positivism with Mm, says ' I reject neither.^'' 

' The feebleness and vacillation of Dr. Tyndall's whole views of 
things, as soon as they bear on matters that are of any universal 
moment, is so typical of the entire positive thought of the day, that 
I may with advantage give one or two further illustrations of it. 
Although in one place he proclaims loudly that the emergence of con- 
sciousness from matter must ever remain a mystery, he yet shows in- 
dication of a hope that it may yet be solved. He quotes with approval, 
and with an implication that he himself leans to the view expressed 
in them, the following words of Uebervireg, whom he calls 'one of the 
subtlest heads that Germany has produced.' ' What happens in the brain, 
says Ueberweg, 'would in my opinion not be possible if the process 
which here appears in its greatest concentration, did not obtain generally, 
only in a vastly diminished degree. Talce a pair of mice, and a cask of 
flour. By copious nourishment the animids increase and midtiply, and 
in the same proportion sen>^ations and feelings augment. The quantity 
of these preserved by the first pair is not simply diffused among their 
descendants, for in that case the last would feel more fully than the first. 
The sensations and the feelings must necessarily be referred back to the 
flour, lohere they exist, weak and pale, it is true, and not concentrated, 
as in the brain.' ' We may not,' Dr. Tyndall adds, by way of a gloss 
to this, ' be able to taste or smell alcohol in a tub of fermented cherries, 
but by distillation tee obtain from them concentrated Kirschwasser. 
Hence Ueberweg's comparison of the brain to a still, which concentrates 
the sensation and feeling pre-existing, but diluted, in the food.' 

Let us now compare this with the following. ' It is no explanation, ' 
says Dr. Tyndall, ' to say that objective and subjective are tico sides of one 
and the same phenomenon. Why should phenomena have two sides ? 
There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two- 
sidedness. Hoes water think or feel tchen it runs into frost ferns upon a 
window pane ? If not, ichy should the molecular motions of the brain be 
yoked to this mysterious companion consciousness ? ' 

Here we have two views, diametrically opposed to each other, the 
one suggested with approval, and the other implied as his own, by 
the same writer, and in the same short essay. The first view is that 
consciousness is the general property of all matter, just as motion is. 
The second view is that consciousness is not the general property of 
matter, but the inexplicable property of the brain only. 



236 18 LIFE WOBTR LIVING? 

Now this statement of their position, if taken as 
they state it, is of course nonsense. It is impossible 

Here again we have a similar inconsistency. Upon one page Dr. 
Tyndall says that when we have ' exhausted physics, and readied its 
mry rim, a mighty Mystery stills looms beyond us. We have made no 
step towards its solution. And thus it will ever loom.' And on the opposite 
page he says thus : ' If asked whether science has solved, or is likely in our 
day to solve, the problem, of the universe, I must shake my head in doubt.' 

Further, I will remind the reader of Dr. Tyndall's arguments, on one 
occasion, against any outside builder or creator of the material universe. 
He argued that such did not exist, because his supposed action was 
not definitely presentable. ' I should enquire after its shape,' he says : 
— ' Has it legs or arms ? If not, I would wish it to be made clear to me 
hoio a tiling without these appliances can act so perfectly the part of a 
builder f He challenged the theist (the theist addressed at the time 
"was Dr. Martineau) to give him some account of his God's workings ; 
and ' YHicn he does this,' said Dr. Tyndall, ' / shall " demand of him 
an immediate exercise " of the power " of definite mental presentation." ' 
If he fails here. Dr. Tyndall argues, his case is at once disproved; 
for nothing exists that is not thus presentable. Let us compare this 
with his dealing with the fact of consciousness. Consciousness, he 
admits, is not thus presentable ; and yet consciousness, he admits, 
exists. 

Instances might be multiplied of the same vacilliationand confusion 
of thought — the same femin ine inability/ to be constant to one train of 
reasoning. But those just givensuffice! What weight can we attach 
to a man's philosophy, who after telling us that consciousness may 
possibly be an inherent property of matter, of which ' the receit of 
reason is a limbec only,' adds in the same breath almost, that matter 
generally is certainly not conscious, and that consciousness comes to 
the brain we know not whence nor wherefore? What shall we say 
of a man who in one sentence tells us that it is impossible that science 
can ever solve the riddle of things, and tells us in the next sentence 
that it is doubtful if this impossibility will be accomplished within the 
next fifty years ? — who argues that God is a mystery, and therefore God 
is a fiction ; who admits that consciousness is a fact, and yet proclaims 
that it is a mystery ; and who says that the fact of matter producing 
consciousness being a mystery, proves the mystery of consciousness 
acting on matter to be a fact ? 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 237 

to consider matter as ' tliat mysterious sometliing hy 
which all that is is accomplished y and then to solve 
the one chief riddle of things by a second mysterious 
something that is not material. Nor can we ' reject,'^ 
as the positivists say they do, an ' outside builder ' 
of the world, and then claim the assistance of an 
outside orderer of the brain. The positivists would 
probably tell us that they do not do so, or that they 
do not mean to do so. And we may well believe 
them. Their fault is that they do not know what 
they mean. I will try to show them. 

First, they mean something, with which, as I have 
said already, we may all agree. They mean that 
matter moving under certain laws (which may pos- 
sibly be part and parcel of its own essence) combines 
after many changes into the human brain, every 
motion of which has its definite connection with con- 
sciousness, and its definite correspondence to some 
state of it. And this fact is a mystery, though it may 
be questioned if it be more mysterious why matter 
should think of itself, than why it should move of 
itself. At any rate, thus far we are all agreed ; and 
whatever mystery we may be dealing with, it is one 
that leaves us in ignorance but not in doubt. The 
doubt comes in at the next step. We have then 
not to wonder at one fact, but, the mystery be- 
ing in either case the same, to choose between two 
hypotheses. The first is that there is in conscious- 



238 IS LIFE WORTH LlVmO ? 

ness one order of forces only, the second is that there 
are two. And when the positive school say that they 
reject neither of these, what they really mean to say 
is that as to the second they neither dare openly do 
one thing or the other — to deny it or accept it, but 
that they remain like an awkward child when offered 
some more pudding, blushing and looking down, and 
utterly unable to say either yes or no. 

Now the question to ask the positive school is this. 
Why are they in this state of suspense ? ' There is 
an iron strength in the logic,'' as Dr. Tyndall himself 
says, that rejects the second order altogether. The 
hypothesis of its existence explains no fact of obser- 
vation. The scheme of nature, if it cannot be wholly 
explained without it, can, at any rate, be explained 
better without it than with it. Indeed from the stand- 
point of the thinker who holds that all that is is mat- 
ter, it seems a thing too superfluous, too unmeaning, 
to be even worth denial. And yet the positive school 
announce solemnly that they will not deny it. Now 
why is this 'I It is true that they cannot prove its 
non-existence ; but this is no reason for professing a 
solemn uncertainty as to its existence. We cannot 
prove that each time a cab drives down Regent Street 
a stick of barley-sugar is not created in Sirius. But 
we do not proclaim to the world our eternal ignorance 
as to whether or no this is so. Why then should our 
positivists treat in this way the alleged immaterial 



TEE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 239 

part of consciousness? Why this emphatic pro- 
testation on their part that there may exist a some- 
thing which, as far as the needs of their science go, 
is superfluous, and as far as the logic of their 
science goes is impossible ? The answer is plain. 
Though their science does not need it, the moral 
value of life does. As to that value they have 
certain foregone conclusions, which they cannot re- 
solve to abandon, but which their science can make 
no room for. Two alternatives are offered them — to 
admit that life has not the meaning they thought it 
had, or that their system has not the completeness 
they thought it had ; and of these two alternatives 
they will accept neither. They could tell us ^witli 
an iron strength of logic ' that all human sorrow 
was as involuntary and as unmeaning as sea-sickness ; 
that love and faith were but distillations of what 
exists diluted in mutton-chops and beer ; and that the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness was nothing 
but an automatic metamorjDhosis of the locusts and 
wild honey. They could tell us ^loith an iron 
strength of logic'' that all the thoughts and moral 
struggles of humanity were but as the clanging whirr 
of a machine, which if a little better adjusted might 
for the future go on spinning in silence. But they 
see that the discovery on man's part that his life 
was nothing more than this would mean a comjDlete 
change in its mechanism, and that thenceforward its 



240 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

entire action wonld be different. Tliey therefore 
seek a refuge in saying it may be more than this. 
But what do they mean by may he f Do they mean 
that in spite of all that science can teach them, in 
spite of that uniformity absolute and omnipresent 
which alone it reveals to them, which day by day it 
is forcing with more vividness on their imaginations, 
and which seems to have no room for anything be- 
sides itself — do they mean that in spite of this there 
may still be a second something, a power of a differ- 
ent order, acting on man's brain and grappling with 
its automatic movements ? Do they m^ean that that 
* Jieatlien ' and ' gross ' conception of an immaterial 
soul is probably after all the true one ? Either they 
must mean this or else they must mean the exact 
opposite. There is no third course open to them.' 

' It is true that one of the favourite teachings of the positive school 
is, that as to this question the proper attitude is that of Agnosticism ; 
in other words, that a state of perpetual suspense on this subject is 
the only rational one. They are asked, have we a soul, a will, and 
consequently any moral responsibility? And the answer is that they 
must shake their heads in doubt. It is true they tell us that it is but 
as men of science that they shake their heads. But Dr. Tyndall tells 
us what this admission means. ' If the materialist is confounded,' he 
says, ' and science rendered dumh, who else is prepared with an an- 
swer? Let us lower our heads and acJcnoicledge our ignorance, priest 
and philosopher — one and all,' In like manner, referring to the feeling 
which others have supposed to be a sense of God's presence and maj- 
esty : this, for the 'man of science,' he says is the sense of a 'power 
which gives fulness and force to his existence, but which he can neither 
analyse nor comprehend.' Which means, that because a physical 
specialist cannot analyse this sense, it is therefore incapable of anal- 
ysis. A bishop might with equal propriety use just the same Ian- 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 241 

Their opinion, as soon as they form one, must rest 
either on this extreme or that. They will see, as 

guage about a glass of port wine, and argue with, equal cogency that 
it was a primary and simple element. What is meant is, that the 
facts of the materialist are the only facts we can be certain of ; and 
because these can give man no moral guidance, that therefore man 
can have no moral guidance at all. 

Let us illustrate the case by some example that is mentally pre- 
sentable. Some ruined girl, we will say, oppressed with a sense of 
degradation, comes to Dr. Tyndall and lays her case before him. ' I 
have heard you are a very icise man.,' she says to him, ' and that you 
have proved that the priest is all wrong, who prepared me a year ago for 
my confirmation. Now tell me, I beseech you tell me, is mine really 
the desperate state I have been taught to think it is? May my body be 
likened to the temple of the Holy Ghost defiled ? or do I owe it no more 
reverence than I owe the Alhambra Theatre ? Am I guilty, and must I 
seek repentance? or am I not guilty, and may I go on just as I please? ' 
'My dear girl,' Dr. Tyndall replies to her, 'I must shake my head in 
doubt. Come, let tcs loicer our heads, and acknowledge our ignorance as 
to whether you are a wretched girl or no. Materialism is confounded, 
and science rendered dumb by questions such as yours ; they can, there- 
fore, never be answered, and must always remain open. I may add, 
Jiqweverythatif-youaskme personally whether I consider- you ta be de- 
graded, I lean to the affij'mative. But I can give you no nason in sup- 
port of tfds judgment, so you may attach to it what value you will.' 

Such is the position of agnostics, when brought face to face with 
the world. They are undecided only about one question, and this is 
the one question which cannot be left undecided. Men cannot remain 
agnostics as to belief that their actions must depend upon, any more 
than a man who is compelled to go on walking can refrain from choos- 
ing one road or other when there are two open to him. Nor does it 
matter that our believing may in neither case amount to a complete 
certitude. It is sufficient that the balance of probability be on one 
side or the other. Two ounces will out- weigh one ounce, quite as 
surely as a ton will. But what our philosophers profess to teach us 
(in so far as they profess to be agnostics, and disclaim being dogma- 
tists) is, that there is no balance either way. The message they shout 
to us is, that they have no message at all ; and that because they are 
withoiit one, the whole world is in the same condition. 
16 



242 ^S LIFE WOBTS: LIVING f 

exact and scientific thinkers, that if it be not practi- 
cally certain that there is some supernatural entity 
in us, it is practically certain that there is not one. 
To say merely that it may exist is but to put an 
ounce in one scale whilst there is a ton in the other. 
It is an admission that is utterly dead and meaning- 
less. They can only entertain the question of its 
existence because its existence is essential to man as 
a moral being. The only reason that can tempt us 
to say it onay be forces us in the same moment to 
say that it must be, and that it is. 

Which answer eventually the positive school will 
choose, and which answer men in general will ac- 
cept, I make as I have said before, no attempt to an- 
swer. My only purpose to show is, that if man has 
any moral being at all, he has it in virtue of his im- 
material will — a force, a something of which physical 
science can give no account whatever, and which it 
has no shadow of authority either for affirming or 
for denying ; and further, that if we are not prevented 
by it from affirming his immaterial will, we are not 
prevented from affirming his immortality, and the 
existence of Grod likewise. 

And now I come to that third point which I said I 
should deal with here, but which I have not yet 
touched upon. Every logical reasoner who admits 
the power of will must admit not only the possibility 
of miracles, but also the actual fact of their daily 



TEE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 243 

and hourly occurrence. Every exertion of the human 
will is a miracle in the strictest sense of the word ; 
only it takes place privately, within the closed walls 
of the brain. The molecules of the brain are arranged 
and ordered by a supernatural agency. Their natu- 
ral automatic movements are suspended, or directed 
and interfered with. It is true that in common 
usage the word miracle has a more restricted sense. 
It is applied generally not to the action of man's 
will, but of God's. But the sense in both cases is 
essentially the same. God's will is conceived of as 
disturbing the automatic movements of matter with- 
out the skull, in just the same way as man's will is 
conceived of as disturbing those of the brain within 
it. ISTor, though the alleged manifestations of the 
former do more violence to the scientific imagination 
than do those of the latter, are they in the eye of 
reason one whit more impossible. The erection of a 
pyramid at the will of an Egyptian king would as 
much disturb the course of nature as the removal of a 
mountain by the faith of a Galilean fisherman ; whilst 
the flooding of the Sahara at the will of a speculating 
company would interfere with the weather of Europe 
far more than the most believing of men ever thought 
that any answer to prayer would. 

It will thus be seen that morality and religion are, 
so far as science goes, on one and the same footing — 
of one and the same substance, and that as assailed 



244 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

by science they either fall together or stand together. 
It will be seen too that the power of science against 
them resides not in itself, but in a certain intellec- 
tual fulcrum that w^e ourselves supply it with. That 
its methods can discover no trace of either of them, 
of itself proves nothing, unless we first lay down as 
a dogma that its methods of discovery are the only 
methods. If we are prepared to abide by this, there 
is little more to be said. The rest, it is becoming 
daily plainer, is a very simple process ; and what we 
have to urge against religion will thenceforth amount 
to this. There is no supernatural, because everything 
is natural ; there is no spirit, because everything is 
matter ; or there is no air, because everything is 
earth ; there is no fire, because everything is water ; 
a rose has no smell because our eyes cannot detect 
any. 

This, in its simj)lest form, is the so-called argument 
of modern materialism. Argument, however, it is 
quite plain it is not. It is a mere dogmatic state- 
ment, that can give no logical account of itself, and 
must trust, for its acceptance, to the world' s vague 
sense of its fitness. The modern world, it is true, has 
mistaken it for an argument, and has been cowed by 
it accordingly ; but the mistake is a simple one, and 
can be readily accounted for. The dogmatism of de- 
nial was formerly a sort of crude rebellion, inconsist- 
ent with itself, and vulnerable in a thousand places. 



THE LOGIC OF SCIENTIFIC NEGATION. 245 

Nature, as then known, was, to all who could weigh 
the wonder of it, a thing inexplicable without some 
supernatural agency. Indeed, marks of such an 
agency seemed to meet men everywhere. But now 
all this has changed. Step by step science has been 
unravelling the tangle, and has loosened with its hu- 
man fingers the knots that once seemed deo digni 
mndice. It has enabled us to see in nature a com- 
plete machine, needing no aid from without. It has 
made a conception of things rational and coherent 
that was formerly absurd and arbitrary. Science 
has done all this ; but this is all that it has done. 
The dogmatism of denial it has left as it found it, an 
unverified and unverifiable assertion. It has simply 
made this dogmatism consistent with itself. But in 
doing this, as men w^ill soon come to see, it has done 
a great deal more than its chief masters bargained 
for. Nature, as explained by science, is nothing 
more than a vast automaton ; and man with all his 
ways and works is simply a part of Nature, and can, 
by no device of thought, be detached from or set 
above it. He is as absolutely automatic as a tree is, 
or as a flower is; and is an incapable as a tree or 
flower of any spiritual responsibility or significance. 
Here we see the real limits of science. It will ex- 
plain the facts of life to us, it is true, but it will not 
explain the value that hitherto we have attached to 
them. Is that solemn value a fact or fancy? As 



246 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

far as proof and reason go, we can answer either 
way. We have two simple and opposite statements 
set against each other, between which argument will 
give us no help in choosing, and between which 
the only arbiter is a judgment formed upon utterly 
alien grounds. As for proof, the nature of the case 
does not admit of it. The world of moral facts, if it 
existed a thousand times, could give no more proof 
of its existence than it does now. If on other grounds 
we believe that it does exist, then signs, if not proofs 
of it, at once surround us everywhere. But let the 
belief in its reality fail us, and instantly the whole 
cloud of witnesses vanishes. For science to demand 
a proof that shall convince it on its own premisses is 
to demand an impossibility, and to involve a contra- 
diction in terms. Science is only possible on the as- 
sumption that nature is uniform. Morality is only 
possible on the assumption that this uniformity is 
interfered with by the will. The world of morals is 
as distinct from the world of science as a wine is from 
the cup that holds it ; and to say that it does not 
exist because science can find no trace of it, is to say 
that a bird has not flown over a desert because it has 
left no footprints in the sand. And as with morals, 
so it is with religion. Science will allow us to deny 
or to afiirm both. Reason will not allow us to deny 
or affirm only one. 



CHAPTER X. 

MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 

Credo quia impossibiU est. 

If we look calmly at the possible future of human 
thought, it will appear from what we have just seen, 
that physical science of itself can do little to control 
or cramp it ; nor until man consents to resign his 
belief in virtue and his own dignity altogether, will 
it be able to repress religious faith, should other 
causes tend to produce a new outbreak of it. But 
the chief difficulties in the matter are still in store 
for us. Let us see never so clearly that science, if 
we are moral beings, can do nothing to weaken our 
belief in God and immortality, but still leaves us 
free, if we will, to believe in them, it seems getting 
clearer and yet more clear that these beliefs are in- 
consistent with themselves, and conflict with these 
very moral feelings, of which they are invoked as an 
explanation. Here it is true that reason does con- 
front us, and what answer to make to it is a very 
serious question. This applies even to natural re- 
ligion in its haziest and most compliant form ; and 
as applied to any form of orthodoxy its force is 
doubled. What we have seen thus far is, that if 

247 



348 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

there be a moral world at all, our knowledge of na- 
ture contains nothing inconsistent with theism. We 
have now to enquire how far theism is inconsistent 
with our conceptions of the moral world. 

In treating these difficulties, we will for the present 
consider them as applying only to religion in general, 
not to any special form of it. The position of ortho- 
doxy we will reserve for a separate treatment. For 
convenience' sake, however, I shall take as a symbol 
of all religion the vaguer and more general teachings 
of Christianity ; but I shall be adducing them not as 
teachings revealed by heaven, but sim^ply as devel- 
oped by the religious consciousness of men. 

To begin then with the great primary difficulties : 
these, though they take various forms, can all in the 
last resort be reduced to two — the existence of evil 
in the face of the power of God, and the freedom of 
man's will in the face of the will of God. And what 
I shall try to make plain with respect to these is 
this : not that they are not difficulties — not that they 
are not insoluble difficulties ; but that they are not 
difficulties due to religion or theism, nor by aban- 
doning theism can we in any way escape from them. 
They start into being not with the belief in God, and 
a future of rewards and punishments, but with the 
belief in the moral law and in virtue, and they are 
common to all systems in which the worth of virtue 
is recognised. 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 249 

The vulgar view of the matter cannot be better 
stated than in the following account given by J. S. 
Mill of the anti-religious reasonings of his father. 
He looked upon religion, says his son, ' as the great- 
est enemy of morality ; first., by setting up fictitious 
excellences — 'belief in creeds^ devotional feelings., and 
ceremonies^ not connected with the good of human- 
Mnd, and causing them to be accepted as substitutes 
for genuine mrtues ; but above all by radically 
mtiating the standard of morals, maldng it consist 
in doing the will of a being, on whom, indeed, it 
lavishes all the phrases of adulation, but whom, in 
sober truth, it depicts as eminently hateful. I have 
a hundred times heard him say that all ages and 
nations have represented their gods as wicked in a 
constantly increasing progression ; that manJcind 
had gone on adding trait after trait, till they reached 
the most perfect expression of wicTcedness which the 
human mind can devise, and have called this God, 
and prostrated themselves before it. The ne plus 
ultra of wickedness he considered to be embodied in 
what is commonly presented to mankind as the creed 
of Christianity. Think {he used to say) of a being 
who would make a hell—ivho would create the human 
race with the infallible for eknowledge, and therefore 
with the intention, that the great majority of them 
should be consigned to horrible and everlasting tor- 
ment.'' James Mill, adds his son, knew quite well 



250 J^8 LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

that Christians were not, in fact, as demoralized by 
this monstrous creed as, if they were logically con- 
sistent, they ought to be. ' TJie same slovenliness 
of tJiougJit {Tie said) and subjection of tlie reason to 
fears, wishes, and affections, wJiicJi enable tJiem to 
accex^t a theory involving a contradiction in terms, 
prevent them from perceiving the logical consequence 
of the theory.^ 

IS'ow, in spite of its coarse and exaggerated acri- 
mony, this passage d.oubtless expresses a great truth, 
which presently I shall go on to consider. But it 
contains also a very characteristic falsehood, of 
which we must first divest it. God is here repre- 
sented as making a hell, with the exjDress intention 
of forcibly putting men into it, and His main hate- 
fulness consists in this capricious and wanton cru- 
elty. Such a representation is, however, an essen- 
tially false one. It is not only not true to the true 
Christian teaching, but it is absolutely opposed to it. 
The God of Christianity does not make hell ; still 
less does He deliberately put men into it. It is 
made by men themselves ; the essence of its torment 
consists in the loss of God ; and those that lose Him, 
lose Him by their own act, from having deliberately 
made themselves incapable of loving Him. God 
never wills the death of the sinner. It is to the 
sinner' s own will that the sinner' s death is due. 

All this rhetoric, therefore, about God's malevo- 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 251 

lence and wickedness is entirely beside the jDoint, 
nor does it even toucli tlie difficulty that, in his 
heart, James Mill is aiming at. His main difficulty 
is nothing more than this : How can an infinite will 
that rules everywhere, find room for a finite will not 
in harmony with itself? Whilst the only farther 
perplexity that the passage indicates, is the exist- 
ence of those evil conditions by which the finite 
will, already so weak and wavering, is yet farther 
hampered. 

Now these difficulties are doubtless quite as great 
as James Mill thought they were ; but we must ob- 
serve this, that they are not of the same kind. They 
are merely intellectual difficulties. They are not 
moral difficulties at all. Mill truly says that they 
involve a contradiction in terms. But why ? Not, 
as Mill says, because a wicked God is set up as the 
object of moral worship, but because, in spite of all 
the wickedness existing, the Author of all existences 
is affirmed not to be wicked. 

Nor, again, is Mill right in saying that this contra- 
diction is due to ' slovenliness of tTiougM.'' Theol- 
ogy accepts it with its eyes wide open, making no 
attempt to ex]Dlain the inexplicable ; and the human 
will it treats in the same way. It makes no offer to 
US to clear up everything, or to enable thought to 
put a girdle round the universe. On the contrary, 
it proclaims with emphasis that its first axioms are 



252 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

unthinkable ; and its most renowned pliilosopMc 
motto is, ' Ihelieve because it is imjyossihle.^ 

What shall it say, then, when assailed by the ra- 
tional moralist ? It will not deny its own condition, 
but it will show its opponent that his is really the 
same. It will show him that, let him give his moral- 
ity what base he will, he cannot conceive of things 
without the same contradiction in terms. If good be 
a thing of any spiritual value — if it be, in other 
words, what every moral system sujoposes it to be — 
that good can co-exist with evil is just as unthinka- 
ble as that God can. The value of moral good is 
supposed to lie in this — that by it we are put en rap- 
port with something that is better than ourselves — 
some ^ stream of tendency^'' let us say, Hliat makes 
for rigliteousness,'' But if this stream of tendency be 
not a personal God, what is it ? Is it Nature ? N^a- 
ture, w^e have seen already, is open to just the same 
objections that God is. It is equally guilty of all 
the evil that is contained in it. Is it Truth, then — 
pure Truth for its own sake ? Again, we have seen 
already that as little can it be that. Is it Human 
N'ature as opposed to N'ature? — Man as distinct 
from, and holier than, any individual men ? Of all 
the substitutes for God this at first sight seems the 
most promising, or, at any rate, the most jDractical. 
But, apart from all the other objections to this, which 
we have already been considering in such detail, it 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 253 

will very soon be apparent that it involves tlie very 
same inconsistency, the same contradiction in terms. 
The fact of moral evil still confronts ns, and the hu- 
manity to which we lift our hearts up is still taxable 
with that. But perhaps we separate the good in 
humanity from the evil, and only worship the former 
as struggling to get free from the latter. This, how- 
ever, will be of little help to us. If what we call 
humanity is nothing but the good part of it, we can 
only vindicate its goodness at the expense of its 
strength. Evil is at least an equal match for it, and 
in most of the battles hitherto it is evil that has 
been victorious. But to conceive of good in this 
way is really to destroy our conception of it. Good- 
ness is in itself an incomplete notion ; it is but one 
facet of a figure which, approached from other sides, 
appears to us as eternity, as omnipresence, and, above 
all, as supreme strength ; and to reduce goodness to 
nothing but the higher part of humanity — to make 
it a wavering fitful flame that continually sinks and 
flickers, that at its best can but blaze for a while, 
and at its brightest can throw no light beyond this 
paltry parish of a world — is to deprive it of its whole 
meaning and hold on us. Or again, even were this 
not so, and could we believe, and be strengthened by 
believing, that the good in humanity would one day 
gain the victory, and that some higher future, which 
even we might partake in by preparing, was in store 



254 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

for the human race, would our conception of the 
matter then be any more harmonious ? As we sur- 
veyed our race as a whole, would its brighter future 
ever do away with its past ? Would not the depth 
and the darkness of the shadow grow more portent- 
ous as the light grew brighter ? And would not 
man's history strike more clearly on us as the ghast- 
ly embodiment of a vast injustice ? But it may be 
said that the sorrows of the past will hereafter be 
dead and done with ; that evil will literally be as 
though it had never been. Well, and so in a short 
time will the good likewise ; and if we are ever to 
think lightly of the world's sinful and sorrowful 
past, we shall have to think equally lightly of its 
sinless and cheerful future. 

Let us pass now to the secondary points. Opponents 
of theism, or of religion in general, are perpetually 
attacking it for its theories of a future life. Its 
eternal rewards and punishments are to them perma- 
nent stumbling-blocks. A future life of hapj)iness 
they think an unmeaning promise ; and a future life 
of misery they think an unworthy and brutal threat. 
And if reason and observation are to be our only 
guides, we cannot say that they do not argue with 
justice. If we believe in heaven, we believe in some- 
thing that the imagination fails to grasp. If we be- 
lieve in hell, we believe in something that our moral 
sense revolts at : for though hell may be nothing 



MORALITY AFD NATURAL THEISM. 255 

but tlie conscious loss of God, and though those 
that lose Him may have made their own hell for 
themselves, still their loss, if eternal, will be an 
eternal flaw and disease in the sum of things — the 
eternal self-assertion against omnipotence of some 
depraved and alien power. 

From these difficulties it is impossible to escape. 
All we can do here, as in the former case, is to show 
that they are not peculiar to the special doctrines 
to which they are supposed generally to be due ; 
but that they are equally inseparable from any of 
the proposed substitutes. We can only show that 
they are inevitable, not that they are not insolu- 
ble. If we condemn a belief in heaven because it is 
unthinkable, we must for the same reason, as we 
have seen already, condemn a Utopia on earth — the 
thing we are now told we should fix our hopes 
upon, instead of it. As to the second question — ■ 
that of eternal punishment, we may certainly here 
get rid of one difficulty by adopting the doctrine of 
a final restitution. But, though one difficulty will 
be thus got rid of, another equally great vdll take 
its place. Our moral sense, it is true, will no more 
be shocked by the conception of an eternal discord 
in things, but we shall be confronted by a fatalism 
that will allow to us no moral being at all. If we 
shall all reach the same place in the end — if inevita- 
bly we shall all do so — it is quite plain that our free- 



'^56 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

dom to choose in the matter is a freedom that is ap- 
parent only. Mr. Leslie Stephen, it seems, sees this 
clearly enough. Once give morality its spiritual 
and supernatural meaning, and there is, he holds, 
' some underlying logical necessity which hinds [a 
belief in hell] indissoluhly with the primary articles 
of the faith. '^ Such a system of retribution, he adds, 
is ' created spontaneously ' by the ' conscience. 
' Heamn and Ttell are corollaries that rise and fall 
together. . . . Whatever the meaning of aicovio?, 
the fearful emotion lohich is symbolised, is eternal 
or independent of time, hy the same right as the 
ecstatic emotion.'' He sees this clearly enough ; but 
the strange thing is that he does not see the con- 
verse. He sees that the Christian conception of 
morality necessitates the affirmation of hell. He 
does not see that the denial of hell is the denial of 
Christian morality, and that in calling the former 
a dream, as he does, he does not call the latter a 
dream likewise. 

We can close our eyes to none of these perplexi- 
ties. The only way to resist their power is not to 
ignore them, but to realise to the full their magni- 
tude, and to see how, if we let them take away fi^om 
us anything, they will in another moment take 
everything ; to see that we must either set our foot 
upon their necks, or that they will set their feet on 
ours ; to see that we can look them dowTi, but that 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 257 

we can never look tliem tlirougli ; to see that we can 
make tliem impotent if we will, but that if tkey are 
not impotent tliey will be omnipotent. 

But the strongest example of this is yet to come : 
and this is not any special belief either as to religion 
or morals, but a belief underlying both of these, and 
without which neither of them were possible. It is 
a belief which from one point of view we have al- 
ready touched upon — the belief in the freedom of 
the will. But we have as yet only considered it in 
relation to physical science. What we have now to 
do is to consider it in relation to itself. 

"VVHiat, then, let us ask, is the nature of the be- 
lief ? To a certain extent the answer is very easy. 
When we speak and think of free-will ordinarily, 
we know quite well what we mean by it ; and we 
one and all of us mean exactly the same thing. It is 
true that when professors speak upon this 'question, 
they make countless efforts to distinguish between 
the meaning which they attach to the belief, and the 
meaning which the world attaches to it. And it is 
possible that in their studies or their lecture-rooms 
they may contrive for the time being to distort or to 
confuse for themselves the common view of the matter. 
But let the professor once forget his theories, and be 
forced to buffet against his life's importunate and 
stern realities : let him quarrel with his housekeeper 
because she has mislaid his spectacles, or his night- 
17 



258 ^^ LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

cap, or, preoccupied with her bible, lias not mixed 
Ms gruel properly ; and Ms conception of free-will 
will revert in an instant to the universal type, and 
the good woman will discern only too plainly that 
her master's convictions as to it are precisely the 
same things as her own. Everywhere, indeed, in 
all the life that surrounds us — in the social and 
moral judgriients on which the fabric of society has 
reared itself, in the personal judgments on which so 
much depends in friendship and antipathies — every- 
where, in conduct, in emotion, in art, in language, 
and in law, we see man's common belief in will 
written, broad, and plain, and clear. There is, per- 
haps, no belief to which, for practical purposes, he 
attaches so important and so plain a meaning. 

Such is free-will when looked at from a distance. 
But let us look at it more closely, and see what 
happens then. The result is strange. Like a path 
seen at dusk across a moorland, plain and visible 
from a distance, but fading gradually from us the 
more near we draw to it, so does the belief in free- 
will fade before the near inspection of reason. It at 
first grows hazy ; at last it becomes indistinguish- 
able. At first we begin to be uncertain of what we 
mean by it ; at last we find ourselves certain that so 
far as we trust to reason, we cannot possibly have 
any meaning at all. Examined in this way, every 
act of our lives — all our choices and refusals, seem 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 259 

nothing but the necessary outcome of things that 
have gone before. It is true that between some 
actions the choice hangs at times so evenly, that our 
will may seem the one thing that at last turns the 
balance. But let us analyse the matter a little more 
carefully, and we shall see that there are a thousand 
microscopic motives, too small for us to be entirely 
conscious of, which, according to how they settle on 
us, will really decide the question. JSTor shall we 
see only that this is so. Let us go a little further, 
and reason will tell us that it must be so. Were 
this not the case, there would have been an escape 
left for us. Though admitting that what controlled 
our actions could be nothing but the strongest mo- 
tive, it might yet be contended that the will could 
intensify any motive it chose, and that thus motives 
really were only tools in its hands. But this does 
but postpone the difficulty, not solve it. What is 
this free-will when it comes to use its tools ? It is a 
something, we shall find, that our minds cannot give 
harbour to. It is a thing contrary to every analogy 
of nature. It is a thing which is forever causing, 
but which is in itself uncaused. 

To escape from this difficulty is altogether hope- 
less. Age after age has tried to do so, but tried in 
vain. There have been always metaphysical experts 
ready to engage to make free-will a something intel- 
lectually conceivable. But they all either leave the 



260 ^S LIFE WOBTE LIVING? 

question wliere they found it, or else they only seem 

to explain it, by denying covertly the fact that 

really wants explaining. 
v — 

Such is free-will when examined by the natural 

reason — a thing that melts away inevitably first to 
haze, and then to utter nothingness. And for a time 
we feel convinced that it really is nothing. Let 
us, however, again retire from it to the common 
distance, and the phantom we thought exorcised is 
again back in an instant. There is the sphinx once 
more, distinct and clear as ever, holding in its hand 
the scales of good and evil, and demanding a curse 
or a blessing for every human action. We are once 
more certain — more certain of this than anything — ■ 
that we are, as we always thought we were, free 
agents, free to choose, and free to refuse ; and that in 
virtue of this freedom, and in virtue of this alone, 
we are responsible for what we do and are. 

Let us consider this point well. Let us consider 
first how free-will is a moral necessity ; next how it 
is an intellectual impossibility ; and lastly how, 
though it be impossible, we yet, in defiance of in- 
tellect, continue, as moral beings, to believe in it. 
Let us but once realise that we do this, that all man- 
kind universally do this and have done — and the 
difficulties offered us by theism will no longer stag- 
ger us. We shall be prepared for them, prepared 
not to drive them away, but to endure their presence. 



MORALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 261 

If in spite of my reason I can believe that my will is 
free, in spite of my reason I can believe that God is 
good. The latter belief is not nearly so hard as the 
former. The greatest stumbling-block in the moral 
world lies in the threshold by which to enter it. 

Such then are the moral diflicnlties, properly so 
called, that beset theism ; but there are certain 
others of a vaguer nature, that we must glance at 
likewise. It is somewhat hard to know how to 
classify these ; but it will be correct enough to say 
that whereas those we have just dealt with appeal to 
the moral intellect, the ones we are to deal with now 
appeal to the moral imagination. The facts that 
these depend on, and which are practically new dis- 
coveries for the modern world, are the insignificance 
of the earth, when compared with the universe, of 
which it is visibly and demonstrably an integral but 
insignificant fragment ; the enormous period of his 
existence for which man has had no religious his- 
tory, and has been, so far as we can tell, not a reli- 
gious being at all ; and the vast majority of the race 
that are still stagnant and semi-barbarous. Is it 
possible, we ask, that a God, with so many stars to 
attend to, should busy himself with this paltry 
earth, and make it the scene of events more stupen- 
dous than the courses of countless systems ? Is it 
possible that of the swarms, vicious and aimless, 
that breed upon it, each individual — Bushman, 



262 J^S LIFE WOBTE LIVING ? 

Chinaman, or Negro — is a precious immortal being, 
with a birthright in infinity and eternity ? The effect 
of these considerations is sometimes overwhelming. 
Astronomy oppresses us with the gulfs of space ; 
geology with the gulfs of time ; history and travel 
with a babel of vain existence. And here as in the 
former case, our perplexities cannot be explained 
away. We can only meet them by seeing that if 
they have any power at all, they are all-powerful, 
and that they will not destroy religion only, but the 
entire moral conception of man also. Religious be- 
lief, and moral belief likewise, involve both of them 
some vast mystery ; and reason can do nothing but 
focalise, not solve it. 

All, then, that I am trying to make evident is this 
— and this must be sufficient for us — not that theism, 
with its attendant doctrines, presents us with no dif- 
ficulties, necessitates no baffling contradictions in 
terms, and confronts us with no terrible and piteous 
spectacles, but that all this is not peculiar to theism. 
It is not the price we pay for rising from morality to 
religion. It is the price we pay for rising from the 
natural to the supernatural. Once double the sum 
of things by adding this second world to it, and it 
swells to such a size that our reason can no longer 
encircle it. We are torn this way and that by con- 
victions, each of which is equally necessary, but 
each of which excludes the others. When we try to 



3I0RALITY AND NATURAL THEISM. 263 

grasp tliem all at once, our mind is like a man tied 
to wild horses ; or like Phaeton in the Sun's chariot, 
bewildered and powerless over the intractable and 
the terrible team. We can only recover our strength 
by a full confession of our weakness. We can only 
lay hold on the beliefs that we see to be needful, by 
asking faith to join hands with reason. If we refuse 
to do this, there is but one alternative. Without 
faith we can perhaps explain things if we will ; but 
we must first make them not worth explaining. We 
can only think them out entirely by regarding them 
as something not worth thinking out at all. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE HFMAI^ EACE AiS^D REVELATION. 

' The scandal of the pious Christian, and the, fallacious triumph of the 
infidel, should cease as soon as they recollect not only by whom, hut like- 
wise to whom, the Divine Revelation was given.' — GtIbbon. ' 

Ais^D now let us suppose ourselves convinced, at 
least for the sake of argument, that man will al- 
ways believe in himself as a moral being, and that he 
will, under no compulsion, let this belief go. G-rant- 
ingthis, from what we have just seen, thus much will 
be plain to us, that theism, should it ever tend to re- 
assert itself, can have no check to fear at the hands of 
positive thought. Let us, therefore, suppose further, 
that such a revival of faith is imminent, and that the 
enlightened world, with its eyes wide open, is about 
to turn once again to religious desires and aims. This 
brings us face to face with the second question, that 
we have not as yet touched upon : will the religion 
thus turned to be a natural religion only, or is it pos- 

' It is curious to reflect that what Gibbon said as a sarcasm, is really 
a serious and profound truth, and leads to conclusions exactly opposite 
to those drawn from it in that witty and most fascinating chapter from 
which the above words are quoted. 

264 



THE HUMAN EACH AND REVELATION. 265 

sible tliat some exclusive dogmatism may be recog- 
nised as a supernatural re-statement of it ? 

Before going further with this question it will be 
well to say a few words as to the exact position it oc- 
cupies. This, with regard to the needs of man, is 
somewhat different to the position of natural theism. 
That a natural theism is essential to man's moral be- 
ing is a proposition that can be more or less rigidly 
demonstrated ; but that a revelation is essential as a 
supplement to natural theism can be impressed upon 
us only in a much looser w^ay. Indeed, many men 
who believe most firmly that without religion human 
life will be dead, rest their hopes for the future not 
on the revival and triumph of any one alleged reve- 
lation, but on the gradual evanescence of the special 
claims of all. Nor can we find any sharp and defined 
line of argument to convince them that they are wrong. 
The objections, however, to which this position is open 
are, I think, none the less cogent because they are 
somewhat general ; and to all practical men, conver- 
sant with life and history, it must be plain that the ne- 
cessity of doing God' s will being granted, it is a most 
anxious and earnest question whether that will has not 
been in some special and articulate way revealed to us. 

Take the mass of religious humanity, and giving it 
a natural creed, it will be found that instinctively and 
inevitably it asks for more. Such a creed by itself 
has excited more longings than it has satisfied, and 



266 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

raised more perplexities tlian it lias set at rest. It is 
true tliat it lias supplied men with, a sufficient analy- 
sis of tlie worth they attach to life, and of the mo- 
mentous issues attendant on the way in which they 
live it. But when they come practically to choose 
their way, they find that such religion is of little 
help to them. It never puts out a hand to lift or lead 
them. It is an alluring voice, heard far off through 
a fog, and calling to them, * Follow me ! ' but it leaves 
them in the fog to pick their own way out towards 
it, over rocks and streams and pitfalls, wdiich they 
can but half distinguish, and amongst which they 
may be either killed or crippled, and are almost cer- 
tain to grow bewildered. And even should there be 
a small minority, who feel that this is not true of 
themselves, they can hardly help feeling that it is 
true of the world in general. A purely natural the- 
ism, with no organs of human speech, and with no 
machinery for making its spirit articulate, never has 
ruled men, and, so far as we can see, never possibly 
can rule them. The choices which our life consists 
of are definite things. The rule which is to guide 
our choices must be something definite also. And 
here it is that natural theism fails. It may supply 
us with the major premiss, but it is vague and uncer- 
tain about the minor. It can tell us with sufiicient 
emphasis that all vice is to be avoided ; it is contin- 
ually at a loss to tell us whether this thing or whether 



THE HUMAN BACE AND REVELATION. 267 

that tiling is vicious. Indeed, this practical insuffi- 
ciency of natural theism is borne witness to by the 
very existence of all alleged revelations. For, if none 
of these be really the special word of God, a belief in 
them is all the more a sign of a general need in man. 
If none of them represent the actual attainment of 
help, they all of them embody the passionate and 
persistent cry for it. 

We shall understand this more clearly if we con- 
sider one of the first characteristics that a revelation 
necessarily claims, and the results that are at this 
moment, in a certain prominent case, attending on a 
denial of it. The characteristic I speak of is an abso- 
lute infallibility. Any supernatural religion that re- 
nounces its claim to this, it is clear can profess to be 
a semi-revelation only. It is a hybrid thing, partly 
natural and j)artly supernatural, and it thus practi- 
cally has all the qualities of a religion that is wholly 
natural. In so far as it professes to be revealed, it of 
course professes to be infallible ; but if the revealed 
part be in the first place hard to distinguish, and in 
the second place hard to understand — if it may mean 
many things, and. many of those things contradict- 
ory — it might just as well have been never made at 
all. To make it in any sense an infallible revelation, 
or in other words a revelation at all, to us, we need 
a power to interpret the testament that shall have 
equal authority with that testament itself. 



268 ^'S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

Simple as this truth seems, mankind have been a 
long time in learning it. Indeed, it is only in the 
present day that its practical meaning has come 
generally to be recognised. But now at this mo- 
ment upon all sides of us, history is teaching it to 
us by an example, so clearly that we can no longer 
mistake it. 

That example is Protestant Christianity, and the 
condition to which, after three centuries, it is now 
visibly bringing itself. It is at last beginning to 
exhibit to us the true result of the denial of infalli- 
bility to a, religion that professes to be supernatural. 
We are at last beginning to see in it neither the 
purifier of a corrupted revelation, nor the corrupter 
of a pure revelation, but the practical denier of all 
revelation whatsoever. It is fast evaporating into a 
mere natural theism, and is thus showing us what, 
as a governing power, natural theism is. Let us 
look at England, Europe, and America, and consider 
the condition of the entire Protestant world. Re- 
ligion, it is true, we shall still find in it ; but it is 
religion from which not only the supernatural ele- 
ment is disappearing, but in which the natural ele- 
ment is fast becoming nebulous. It is indeed grow- 
ing, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says it is, into a religion 
of dreams. All its doctrines are growing vague as 
dreams, and like dreams their outlines are for ever 
changing. Mr. Stephen has pitched on a very happy 



THE HUMAN EACH AND REVELATION. 269 

illustration of this. A distinguished clergyman of 
the English Church, he reminds us, has preached 
and published a set of sermons, ' in which he denies 
emphatically any belief in eternal punishment, al- 
though admitting at the same time that the opinion 
of the Christian world is against him. These ser- 
mons gave rise to a discussion in one of the leading 
monthly reviews, to which Protestant divines of all 
shades of opinion contributed their various argu- 
ments. ' It is harely possible,'^ says Mr. Stephen, 
' with tlie best intentions, to take such a discussion 
seriously. Boswell tells us how a lady interrogated 
Dr. Johnson as to the nature of the spiritual body. 
She seemed desirous., he adds, of ^'•'knowing more; 
but he left the subject in obscurity.^'' We smile at 
BoswelVs evident impression that Johnson could, if 
he had chosen, have dispelled the darkness. When 
we find a number of educated gentlemen seriously 
enquiring as to the conditions of existence in the 
next world, we feel that they are sharing BoswelV s 
naivete without his excuse. WJiat can any human 
being outside a pulpit say upon such a subject 
which does not amount to a confession of his own 
ignorance, coupled, it may be, with inore or less 
suggestion of shadowy hopes and fears f Have the 
secrets of the prison-house really been revealed to 
Canon Farrar or Mr. Beresford Hope f . . . When 

* Our Eternal Hope. By Canon Farrar. 



270 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

men search into the unkowable, they naturally ar- 
rive at very diferent results.'' And Mr. Stephen 
argues with perfect justice that if we are to judge 
Christianity from such discussions as these, its doc- 
trines of a future life are all visibly receding into a 
vague '■dream-land;'' and we shall be quite ready 
to admit, as he says, in words I have abeady quoted, 
' that the impertinent young curate loho tells \him 
he'\ will he burnt everlastingly for not sharing such 
superstitions, is just as ignorant as [Mr. Stephen 
himself], and that [Mr. Stephen] knows as much as 
[his] dog.'' 

The critic, in the foregoing passages, draws his 
conclusion from the condition of but one Protestant 
doctrine. But he might draw the same conclusion 
from all ; for the condition of all of them is the 
same. The divinity of Christ, the nature of his 
atonement, the constitution of the Trinity, the effi- 
cacy of the sacraments, the inspiration of the Bible 
— there is not one of these points on which the doc- 
trines, once so fiercely fought for, are not now, 
among the Protestants, getting as vague and vary- 
ing, as weak and as compliant to the caprice of each 
individual thinker, as the doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment. And Mr. Stephen and his school exaggerate 
nothing in the way in which they represent the spec- 
tacle. Protestantism, in fact, is at last becoming 
explicitly what it always was implicitly, not a super- 



TEE HUMAN EACE AND REVELATION. 271 

natural religion wliicb. fulfils the natural, but a 
natural religion which denies the supernatural. 

And what, as a natural religion, is its working 
power in the world 1 Much of its earlier influence 
doubtless still survives ; but that is a survival only 
of what is passing, and we must not judge it by that. 
We must judge it by what it is growing into, not by 
what it is growing out of. And judged in this way, 
its practical power — its moral, its teaching, its guid- 
ing power — is fast growing as weak and as uncertain 
as its theology. As long as its traditional moral 
system is in accordance with what men, on other 
grounds, aiDprove of, it may serve to express the 
general tendency impressively, and to invest it with 
the sanction of many reverend associations. But 
let the general tendency once begin to conflict with 
it, and its inherent weakness in an instant becomes 
apparent. We may see this by considering the moral 
character of Christ, and the sort of weight that is 
claimed for His example. This examjDle, so the 
Christian world teaches, is faultless and infallible ; 
and as long as we believe this, the example has 
supreme authority. But apply to this the true 
Protestant method, and the authority soon shows 
signs of wavering. Let us once deny that Christ 
was more than a faultless man, and we lose by that 
denial our authority for asserting that he was as 
much as a faultless man. Even should it so happen 



272 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

that we do approve entirely of his conduct, it is we 
who are approving of him, not he who is approving 
of us. The old position is reversed : we become the 
patrons of our most worthy Judge eternal ; and the 
moral infallibility is transferred from him to ourselves. 
In other words, the practical Protestant formula can 
be nothing more than this. The Protestant teacher 
says to us, ' Such a way of life is tlie best, take my 
word for it : and if you want an example, go to tJiat 
excellent Son of Damd, wTio, talce my word for it, 
was the xery hest of men.'' But even in this case the 
question arises, how shall the Protestants interpret 
the character that they praise % And to this they 
can never give any satisfactory answer. What really 
happens with them is inevitable and obvious. The 
character is simply for them a symbol of what each 
happens to think most admirable ; and the identity 
in all cases of its historical details does not produce 
an identity as of a single portrait, but an identity as 
of one frame applied to many. Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
for instance, sees in Jesus one sort of man. Father 
Newman another, Charles Kingsley another, and M. 
Renan another ; and the Imitatio Christi, as under- 
stood by these, will be found in each case to mean a 
very different thing. The difference between these 
men, however, will seem almost unanimity, if we 
compare them with others who, so far as logic and 
authority go, have just as good a claim on our atten- 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 373 

tion. There is hardly any conceivable aberration of 
moral licence that has not, in some quarter or other, 
embodied itself into a rnle of life, and claimed to be 
the proper outcome of Protestant Christianity. I^or 
is this true only of the wilder and more eccentric 
sects. It is true of graver and more weighty think- 
ers also ; so much so, that a theological school in 
Germany has maintained boldly ' that fornication 
is blameless^ and that it is not interdicted by the 
precepts of the Gospel.'' ' 

The matter, however, does not end thus. The 
men I have just mentioned agree, all of them, that 
Christ' s moral example was perfect ; and their only 
disagreement has been as to what that example was. 
But the Protestant logic will by no means leave us 
here. That alleged perfection, if we ourselves are to 
be the judges of it, is sure, by-and-by, to exhibit to 
us traces of imperfection. And this is exactly the 
thing that has already begun to happen. A genera- 
tion ago one of the highest-minded and most logical 
of our English Protestants, Professor Francis New- 
man, declared that in Christ's character there were 
certain moral deficiencies ; ^ and the last blow to the 
moral authority of Protestantism was struck by one 
of its own household. It is true that Professor New- 

' See Dollinger's Continuation of Hortig's Church History, quoted 
by Mr. J. B. Robertson, in bis Memoir of Dr. Moehler. 
^ See Phases of my Faith, by Francis Newman. 
18 



274 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

man's censures were small and were not irreverent. 
But if these could come from a man of his intense 
piety, what will and what do come from other quar- 
ters may be readily conjectured. Indeed, the fact is 
daily growing more and more evident, that for the 
world that still calls itself Protestant, the autocracy 
of Christ's moral example is gone ; and its nominal 
retention of power only makes its real loss of it the 
more visible. It merely reflects and focalises the 
uncertainty that men are again feeling — the uncer- 
tainty and the sad bewilderment. The words and 
the countenance, once so sure and steadfast, now 
change, as we look at, and listen to them, into new 
accents and aspects ; and the more earnestly we gaze 
and listen, the less can we distinguish clearly what 
we hear or see. ' What shall toe do to he saved f ' 
men are again crying. And the lips that were once 
oracular now merely seem to murmur back confus- 
edly, ' Alas ! what shall yoit do f ' 

Such and so helpless, even now, is natural theism 
showing itself ; and in the dim and momentous 
changes that are coming over things, in the vast flux 
of opinion that is preparing, in the earthquake that 
is rocking the moral ground under us, overturning 
and engulfing the former landmarks, and re-opening 
the graves of the buried lusts of paganism, it will 
show itself very soon more helpless still. Its feet 
are on the earth only. The earth trembles, and it 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 275 

trembles : it is in the same case as we are. It 
stretches in vain its imploring hands to heaven. 
But the heaven takes no heed of it. No divine hand 
reaches down to it to uphold and guide it. 

This must be the feeling, I believe, of most honest 
and practical men, with regard to natural religion, 
and its necessary practical ineiSciency. l^or will the 
want it necessarily leaves of a moral rule be the only 
consideration that will force this conviction on them. 
The lieart, as the phrase goes, will corroborate the 
evidence of the head. It will be felt, even more 
forcibly than it can be reasoned, that if there be in- 
deed a God who loves and cares for men, he must 
surely, or almost surely, have spoken in some audi- 
ble and certain way to them. At any rate I shall 
not be without many who agree with me, when I say 
that for the would-be religious world it is an anx- 
ious and earnest question whether any special and 
explicit revelation from God exist for us ; and this 
being the case, it will be not lost time if we try to 
deal fairly and dispassionately with the question. 

Before going further, however, let us call to mind 
two things. Let us remember first, that if we expect 
to find a revelation at all, it is morally certain that 
it must be a revelation already in existence. It is 
hardly possible, if we consider that all the super- 
natural claims that have been made hitherto are 
false, to expect that a new manifestation, altogether 



276 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

different in kind, is in store for the world in tlie fu- 
ture. Secondly, our enquiries being thus confined 
to religions that are already in existence, what we 
are practically concerned with is the truth of Chris- 
tianity only. It is true that we have heard, on all 
sides, of the superiority of other religions to the 
Christian. But the men who hold such language, 
though they may affect to think that such religions 
are superior in certain moral points, yet never dream 
of claiming for them the miraculous and supernat- 
ural authority that they deny to Christianity. ISTo 
man denies that Christ was born of a virgin, in order 
to make the same claim for Buddha : or denies the 
Christian Trinity in order to affirm the Brahminic. 
There is but one alleged revelation that, as a revela- 
tion, the progressive nations of the world are con- 
cerned with, or whose supernatural claims are still 
worthy of being examined by us : and that religion 
is the Christian. These claims, it is true, are being 
fast discredited ; but still, as yet they have not been 
silenced wholly ; and what I propose to ask now is, 
what chance is there of their power again reviving. 

Now considering the way in which I have just 
spoken of Protestantism, it may seem to many that 
I have dismissed this question already. With the 
' enligldened ' English thinker such certainly will be 
the first impression. But there is one point that 
such thinkers all forget : Protestant Christianity is 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 211 

not tlie only form of it. Tliey have still the form to 
deal with which is the oldest, the most legitimate, 
and the most coherent— the Church of Rome. They 
surely cannot forget the existence of this Church or 
her magnitude. To suppose this would be to at- 
tribute to them too insular, or rather too provincial, 
an ignorance. The cause, however, certainly is ig- 
norance, and an ignorance which, though less sur- 
prising, is far deeper. In this country the popular 
conception of Rome has been so distorted by our 
familiarity with Protestantism, that the true concep- 
tion of her is something quite strange to us. Our 
divines have exhibited her to us as though she were 
a lapsed Protestant sect, and they have attacked her 
for being false to doctrines that were never really 
hers. They have failed to see that the first and es- 
sential difference which separates her from them 
lies, primarily not in any special dogma, but in the 
authority on which all her dogmas rest. Protestants, 
basing their religion on the Bible solely, have con- 
ceived that Catholics of course profess to do so like- 
wise ; and have covered them with invective for 
being traitors to their supposed profession. But 
the Church's primary doctrine is her own perpetual 
infallibility. She is inspired, she declares, by the 
same Spirit that inspired the Bible ; and her voice 
is, equally with the Bible, the voice of God. This 
theory, however, upon which really her whole fabric 



278 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

rests, popular Protestantism either ignores alto- 
gether, or treats it as if it were a modern supersti- 
tion, which, so far from being essential to the 
Church's system, is, on the contrary, inconsistent 
with it. Looked at in this way, Rome to the Prot- 
estant's mind has seemed naturally to be a mass of 
superstitions and dishonesties ; and it is this view of 
her that, strangely enough, our modern advanced 
thinkers have accepted without question. Though 
they have trusted the Protestants in nothing else, 
they have trusted them here. They have taken the 
Protestants' word for it, that Protestantism is more 
reasonable than Romanism ; and they think, there- 
fore, that if they have destroyed the former, a for- 
tiori have they destroyed the latter. ^ 

No conception of the matter, however, could be 
more false than this. To whatever criticism the 

' It is difficult on any other supposition to account for tlie marked 
fact that hardly any of our English rationalists have criticised Chris- 
tianity, except as presented to them in a form essentially Protestant ; 
and that a large proportion of their criticisms are solely applicable to 
this. It is amusing, too, to observe hovs^, to men of often such really 
wide minds, all theological authority is represented by the various so- 
cial types of contemporary Anglican or dissenting dignitaries. Men 
such as Professors Huxley and Clifford, Mr. Leslie Stephen, and Mr. 
Frederic Harrison, can find no representatives of dogmatism but in 
bishops, deans, curates, Presbyterian ministers — and, above all, cu- 
rates. The one mouth-piece of the Eccleda docens is for them the 
parish pulpit ; and the more ignorant be its occupant the more repre- 
sentative do they think his utterances. Whilst Mr. Matthew Arnold 
apparently thinks the whole cause of revealed religion stands and 
falls with the vagaries of the present Bishop of Gloucester. 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 279 

Catholic position may be open, it is certainly not thus 
included in Protestantism, nor is it reached through 
it. Let us try and consider the matter a little more 
truly. Let us grant all that hostile criticism can say 
against Protestanism as a supernatural religion : in 
other words, lee us set it aside altogether. Let us 
suppose nothing, to start with, in the world but a 
natural moral sense, and a simple natural theism ; 
and let us then see the relation of the Church of 
Rome to that. Approached in this way, the religious 
world will appear to us as a body of natural theists, 
all agreeing that they must do God' s will, but differ- 
ing widely amongst themselves as to what His will 
and His nature are. Their moral and religious views 
will be equally vague and dreamlike — more dream- 
like even than those of the Protestant world at pres- 
ent. Their theories as to the future will be but 
*■ sTtadoioy Tiopes and fears.'' Their practice, in the 
present, will vary from asceticism to the widest 
license. And yet, in spite of all this confusion and 
difference, there will be amongst them a vague tend- 
ency to unanimity. Each man will be dreaming his 
own spiritual dream, and the dreams of all will be 
different. All their dreams, rt will be plain, cannot 
represent reality ; and yet the belief will be common 
to all that some common reality is represented by 
them. Men, therefore, will begin to compare their 
dreams together, and try to draw out of them the 



280 J-S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

common element, so that tlie dream may come slowly 
to be tlie same for all ; that, if it grows, it may grow 
by some recognizable laws ; that it may, in other 
words, lose its character of a dream, and assume that 
of a reality. We suppose, therefore, that our nat- 
ural theists form themselves into a kind of parlia- 
ment, in which they may compare, adjust, and give 
shape to the ideas that were before so wavering, and 
which shall contain some machinery for formulating 
such agreements as may be come to. The common 
religious sense of the world is thus organized, and its 
conclusions registered. We have no longer the wa- 
vering dreams of men ; we have instead of them the 
constant vision of man. 

Now in such a universal parliament we see what 
the Church of Rome essentially is, viewed from her 
natural side. She is ideally, if not actually, the 
parliament of the believing world. Her doctrines, as 
she one by one unfolds them, emerge upon us like 
petals from a half-closed bud. They are not added 
arbitrarily from without ; they are developed from 
within. They are the flowers contained from the 
first in the bud of our moral consciousness. When 
she formulates in these days something that has not 
been formulated before, she is no more enunciating a 
new truth than was ISTewton when he enunciated the 
theory of gravitation. Whatever truths, hitherto 
hidden, she may in the course of time grow conscious 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 281 

of, she holds that these were always implied in her 
teaching, though before she did not know it ; just as 
gravitation was implied in many ascertained facts 
that men knew weU enough long before they knew 
that it was implied in them. Thus far, then, the 
Church of Rome essentially is the spiritual sense of 
humanity, speaking to men through its proper and 
only possible organ. Its intricate machinery, such 
as its systems of representation, its methods of 
voting, the appointment of its speaker, and the legal 
formalities required in the recording of its decrees, 
are things accidental only ; or if they are necessary, 
they are necessary only in a secondary way. 

But the picture of the Church thus far is only half 
drawn. She is all this, but she is something more 
than this. She is not only the parliament of spirit- 
ual man, but she is such a parliament guided by the 
Spirit of God. The Avork of that Spirit may be se- 
cret, and to the natural eyes untraceable, as the 
work of the human will is in the human brain. But 
none the less it is there. 

Totam infusa per artus 
Mens agitat molem, et magna se corpore miscet. 

The analogy of the human brain is here of great 
help to us. The human brain is an arrangement 
of material particles which can become connected 
with consciousness only in virtue of such a special 



282 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

arrangement. Tlie Cliurch is theoretically an ar- 
rangement of individuals wliich can become con- 
nected with the Spirit of God only in virtue of an 
arrangement equally special. 

If this be a true picture of the Catholic Church, 
and the place which the only revelation we are con- 
cerned with ideally holds in the world, there can be 
no d 'priori difficulty in the passage from a natural 
religion to such a supernatural one. The difficulties 
begin when we compare the ideal picture with the 
actual facts ; and it is true, when we do this, that 
they at once confront us with a strength that seems 
altogether disheartening. These difficulties are of 
two distinct kinds ; some, as in the case of natural 
theism, are moral ; others are historical. We will 
deal with the former first, beginning with that which 
is at once the profoundest and the most obvious. 

The Church, as has been said already, is ideally 
the parliament of the whole believing world ; but 
we find, as a matter of fact, that she is the parlia- 
ment of a small part only. Now what shall we say 
to this ? If God would have all men do His vdll, 
why should He place the knowledge of it within 
reach of such a small minority of them ? And to 
this question we can give no answer. It is a mys- 
tery, and we must acknowledge frankly that it is 
one. But there is this to say yet — that it is not a 
new mystery. We already suppose ourselves to 



THE HUMAN BACH AND BEVELATION. 283 

have accepted it in a simpler form : in the form of 
the presence of evil, and the partial prevalence of 
good. By acknowledging the claim of the special 
revelation in question, we are not adding to the 
complexity of that old world-problem. I am aware, 
however, that many think just the reverse of this. 
I will therefore dwell upon the subject for a few 
moments longer. To many who can accept the diffi- 
culty of the partial presence of good, the difficulty 
seems wantonly aggravated by the claims of a special 
revelation. These claims seem to them to do two 
things. In the first place, they are thought to make 
the presence of good even more partial than it oth- 
erwise would be ; and secondly — which is a still 
greater stumbling-block — to oblige us to condemn as 
evil much that would else seem good of the purest 
kind. There are many men, as we must all know, 
without the Church, wdio are doing their best to fight 
their way to God ; and orthodoxy is supposed to 
pass a cruel condemnation on these, because they 
have not assented to some obscure theory, their re- 
jection or ignorance of which has plainly stained 
neither their lives nor hearts. And of orthodoxy 
under certain forms this is no doubt true ; but it is 
not true of the orthodoxy of Catholicism. There is 
no point, probably, connected with this question, 
about which the general world is so misinformed and 
ignorant, as the sober but boundless chanty of what 



284 ^S LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

it calls tlie anathematising Chnrcli. So little indeed 
is this charity understood generally, that to assert 
it seems a startling paradox. Most paradoxes are 
doubtless in reality the lies they at first sight seem 
to be ; but not so this one. It is the simple state- 
ment of a fact. Never was there a religious body, 
except the Roman, that laid the intense stress she 
does on all her dogmatic teachings, and had yet the 
justice that comes of sympathy for those that can- 
not receive them. She condemns no goodness, she 
condemns even no earnest worship, though it be 
outside her pale. On the contrary, she declares 
explicitly that a knowledge of ' the one true God, 
our Creator and Lord,'' may be attained to by the 
'•natural ligJit of human reason,'' meaning by '^rea- 
son ' faith unenlightened by revelation ; and she 
declares those to be anathema who deny this. The 
holy and humble men of heart who do not know her, 
or who in good faith reject her, she commits with 
confidence to God' s uncovenanted mercies ; and 
these she knows are infinite ; but, exceiDt as revealed 
to her, she can of necessity say nothing distinct 
about them. It is admitted by the world at large, 
that of her supposed bigotry she has no bitterer or 
more extreme exponents than the Jesuits ; and this 
is what a Jesuit theologian says upon this matter : 
' A heretic, so long as he believes his sect to he inore 
or equally desermng of belief, has no obligation to 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 285 

heliem the Cliurcli . . . [and] wlien men who liave 
heen brought up in heresy, are persuaded from boy- 
hood that we impugn and attack the word of God, that 
we are idolaters, pestilent deceivers, and are there- 
fore to be shunned as pestilence, they cannot, while 
this per suasion lasts, with a safe conscience hear us?'' 
Thus for those without her the Church has one 
condemnation only. Her anathemas are on none 
but those who reject her with their eyes open, by 
tampering with a conviction that she really is the 
truth. These are condemned, not for not seeing 
that the teacher is true, but because having really 
seen this, they continue to close their eyes to it. 
They will not obey when they know they ought to 
obey. And thus the moral offence of a Catholic in 
denying some recondite doctrine, does not lie merely, 
and need not lie at all, in the immediate bad effects 
that such a denial would necessitate ; but in the dis- 
obedience, the self-will, and the rebellion that must 
in such a case be both a cause and a result of it. 

In the light of these considerations, though the 
old perplexity of evil will still confront us, it w^ill be 
seen that the claims of Catholic orthodoxy do noth- 
ing at all to add to it. If orthodoxy, however, ad- 
mit so much good without itself, we may perhaps 
be inclined to ask what special good it claims within 

' Busenbaum, quoted by Dr. J. H. Newman, Letter to the Duke of 
Norfolk, p. 65. 



286 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

itself, and what possible motives can exist for either 
understanding or teaching it. But we might ask 
with exactly equal force, what is the good of true 
physical science, and why should we try to impress 
on the world its teachings ? Such a question, we 
can at once see, is absurd. Because a large number 
of men know nothing of physical science, and are 
apparently not the worse for their ignorance, we do 
not for that reason think physical science worthless. 
We believe, on the whole, that a knowledge of the 
laws of matter, including those of our organisms and 
their environments, will steadily tend to better our 
lives, in so far as they are material. It will tend, for 
instance, to a better preservation of our health. 
But we do not for this reason deny that many indi- 
viduals may jDreserve their health who are but very 
partially acquainted with the laws of it. Nor do we 
deny the value of a thorough study of astronomy 
and meteorology because a certain practical knowl- 
edge of the weather and of navigation may be at- 
tained without it. On the contrary, we hold that 
the fullest knowledge we can acquire on such mat- 
ters it is our duty to acquire, and not acquire only, 
but as far as possible promulgate. It is true that 
the mass of men may never master such knowledge 
thoroughly ; but what they do master of it we feel 
convinced should be the truth, and even what they do 
not, will, we feel convinced, be some indirect profit 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION 287 

to them. And the case of spiritual science is entire- 
ly analogous to the case of natural science. A man 
to whom the truth is open is not excused from find- 
ing it because he knows it is not so open to all. A he- 
retic who denies the dogmas of the Church has his 
counterpart in the quack who denies the verified 
conclusions of science. The moral condemnation 
that is given to the one is illustrated by the in- 
tellectual condemnation that is given to the other. 

If we will think this over carefully, we shall get a 
clearer view of the moral value claimed for itself by 
orthodoxy. Some of its doctrines, the great and 
picturable parts of them, that appeal to all, and 
that in some degree can be taken in by all, it de- 
clares doubtless to be saving, in their own nature. 
But for the mass of men the case is quite difilerent 
with the facts underlying these. That we eat Christ' s 
body in the Eucharist is a belief that, in a practical 
way, can be understood perfectly by anyone ; but 
the philosophy that is involved in this belief would 
be to most men the merest gibberish. Yet it is no 
more unimportant that those who do understand this 
philosophy, should do so truly and transmit it faith- 
fully, than it is unimportant that a physician should 
understand the action of alcohol, because anyone 
independent of such knowledge can tell that so many 
glasses of wine will have such and such an effect on 
him. Theology is to the spiritual body what anato- 



288 ■^'S' LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

my and medicine are to the natural body. The 
parts they each play in our lives are analogous, and 
in their resxDective worlds their raison WUre is the 
same. What then can be shallower than the rheto- 
ric of such thinkers as Mr. Carlyle, in which natural 
religion and orthodoxy are held uj) to us as contrasts 
and as opposites, the former being praised as simple 
and going straight to the heart, and the latter de- 
scribed and declaimed against as the very reverse of 
this? ^ On the one hand,'' it is said, '■see the soul 
going straight to its God, feeling His love, and con- 
tent that others should feel it. On the other hand, see 
this pure and free communion, distracted and inter- 
rupted by a thousand tortuous reasonings as to the 
exact nature of it. What can obscure intellectual 
propositions,'' it is asked, ^hate to do with a religion 
of the heart ? And do not they check the latter by 
being thus bound up with it f ' But v/hat really can 
be more misleading than this 1 N^atural religion is 
doubtless simpler in one sense than revealed religion ; 
but it is o^ly simple because it has no authoritative 
science of itself. It is simple for the same reason 
that a boy' s account of having given himself a head- 
ache is simpler than a physician's would be. The 
boy says merely, ' / ate ten tarts, and drank three 
bottles of ginger -beer.' The physician, were he to 
explain the catastrophe, would describe a number 
of far more complex processes. The boy's account 



THE EUMAIf BACE AND REVELATION. 289 

would be of course the simplest, and would certainly 
go more home to the general heart of boyhood ; but 
it would not for that reason be the correctest or the 
most important. And just like this will be the case 
of the divine communion, which the simple saint may 
feel, and the subtle theologian analyse. 

But it will be well to observe, further, that the 
simplicity of a religion can of itself be no test of the 
probable truth of it. And in the case of natural re- 
ligion, what is called simplicity is in general nothing 
more than vagueness. If simplicity used in this 
way be a term of praise, we might praise a landscape 
as simple because it was half -drowned in mist. As 
a matter of fact, however, the religion of the Catho- 
lic Church, putting out of the question its theology, 
is a thing far simpler than the outside world sup- 
poses ; nor is there a doctrine in it without a direct 
moral meaning for us, and not tending to have a 
direct effect on the character. 

But the outside world misjudges of all this for va- 
rious reasons. In the first place, it can reach it as a 
rule through explanations only ; and the explanation 
or the account of anything is always far more intri- 
cate than the apprehension of the thing itself. Take, 
for instance, the practice of the invocation of saints. 
This seems to many to complicate the whole relation 
of the soul to God, to be introducing a number of 
new and unnecessary go-betweens, and to make us, 
19 



290 IS LIFE WORTE LIVING? 

as it were, communicate with God through a drago- 
man. But the case really is very different. Of 
course it may be contended that intercessory prayer, 
or that lorayer of any kind, is an absurdity ; but for 
those who do not think this, there can be nothing to 
object to in the invocation of saints. It is admitted 
by such men that we are not wrong in asking the 
living to pray for us. Surely, therefore, it is not 
wrong to make a like request of the dead. In the 
same way, to those who believe in purgatory, to 
pray for the dead is as natiiral and as rational as to 
pray for the living. Next, as to this doctrine of 
purgatory itself — which has so long been a stum- 
bling-block to the whole Protestant world — time goes 
on, and the view men take of it is changing. It is 
becoming fast recognized on all sides that it is the 
only doctrine that can bring a belief in future re- 
wards and punishments into anything like accord- 
ance with our notions of what is just or reasonable. 
So far from its being a superfluous superstition, it is 
seen to be just what is demanded at once by reason 
and morality ; and a belief in it to be not an intel- 
lectual assent only, but a partial harmonising of the 
whole moral ideal. And the whole Catholic religion, 
if we only distinguish and apprehend it rightly, will 
present itself to us in the same light. 

But there are other reasons besides those just de- 
scribed, by which outsiders are hindered from ar- 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION 291 

riving at snch a right view of the matter. Not only 
does the intricacy of Catholicism described, blind 
them to the simplicity of Catholicism experienced, 
but they confuse with the points of faith, not only 
the scientific accounts the theologians give of them, 
but mere rules of discipline, and pious opinions also. 
It is supposed popularly, for instance, to be of 
Catholic faith that celibacy is essential to the priest- 
hood. This as a fact, however, is no more a part of 
the Catholic faith than the celibacy of a college fel- 
low is a part of the Thirty-nine Articles, or than the 
skill of an English naval officer depends on his not 
having his wife with him on shipboard. Nor again, 
to take another popular instance, is the headship 
of the Catholic Church connected essentially with 
Rome, any more than the English Parliament is es- 
sentially connected with Westminster. 

The difficulty of distinguishing things that are of 
faith, from mere pious opinions, is a more subtle 
one. From the confusion caused by it, the Church 
seems pledged to all sorts of grotesque stories of 
saints, and accounts of the place and aspect of heav- 
en, of hell and purgatory, and to be logically bound 
to stand and fall by these. Thus Sir James Stephen 
happened once in the course of his reading to light 
on an opinion of Bellarmine's, and certain arguments 
by which he supported it, as to the place of purga- 
tory. It is quite true that to us Bellarmine's opinion 



292 ^'5 LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

seems sufficiently ludicrous ; and Sir James Stephen 
argued that the Roman Church is ludicrous in just 
the same degree. But if he had studied the matter 
a little deeper, he would soon have dropped his argu- 
ment. He would have seen that he was attacking, 
not the doctrine of the Church, but simply an opinion, 
not indeed condemned by her, but held avowedly 
without her sanction. Had he studied Bellarmine 
to a little more purpose, he w^ould have seen that 
that writer expressly states it to be ' a question loTiere 
purgatory is, but tliat tTie CJiurcli lias defined noth- 
ing on this point. '^ He would also have learned from 
the same source that it is no article of Catholic faith, 
though it was of Bellarmine' s opinion, that there is 
in purgatory any material fire ; and that, ' as to the 
intensity of the pains of purgatory, though all ad- 
mit that they are greater than anything that we 
suffer in this life, still it is doubtful hoio this is to 
be explained and understood.^ He would have 
learned too that, according to Bonaventura, ''the 
sufferings of purgatory are only severer than those 
of this life, inasmuch as the greatest suffering in 
purgatory is more severe than the greatest suffering 
endured in this life ; though there may be a degree 
of punishment in purgatory less intense than what 
may sometimes be undergone in this world.'' And 
finally he would have learned — what in this connec- 
tion would have been well worth his attention — that 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 293 

the duration of pains in purgatory is according to 
Bellarmine, ' so completely uncertain, tliat it is rash 
to pretend to determine anything about it.'' 

Here is one instance, that will be as good as many, 
of the way in which the private opinions of individ- 
ual Catholics, or the transitory opinions of jDarticu- 
lar epochs, are taken for the unalterable teachings 
of the Catholic Church herself ; and it is no more 
logical to condemn the latter as false because the 
former are, than it would be to say that all modern 
geography is false because geographers may still en- 
tertain false opinions about regions as to which they 
do not profess certainty. Mediaeval doctors thought 
that purgatory might be the middle of the earth. 
Modern geographers have thought that there might 
be an open sea at the North Pole. But that wrong 
conjectures have been hazarded in both cases, can 
prove in neither that there have been no true dis- 
coveries. The Church, it is undeniable, has for a 
long time lived and moved amongst countless false 
opinions ; and to the external eye they have natu- 
rally seemed a part of her. But science moves on, 
and it is shown that she can cast them off. She has 
cast off some already ; soon doubtless she will cast 
off others ; not in any petulant anger, but with a 
composed determined gentleness, as some new light 
gravely dawns upon her. 

Granting all this, however, there remains a yet 



294 ^S LIFE WOBTH LIVING ? 

subtler characteristic of the Church, which goes to 
make her a rock of offence to many ; and that is, the 
temper and the intellectual tone which she seems to 
develop in her members. But here, again, we must 
call to our aid considerations similar to those we 
have just been dwelling on. We must remember 
that the particular tone and temper that offends us 
is not necessarily Catholicism. The temper of the 
Catholic world may change, and, as a matter of fact, 
does change. It is not the same, indeed, in any two 
countries, or in any two eras. And it may have a 
new and unsuspected future in store for it. It may 
absorb ideas that we should consider broader, bolder, 
and more rational than any it seems to possess at 
present. But if ever it does so, the Church, in the 
opinion of Catholics, will not be growing false to 
herself ; she will only, in due time, be unfolding her 
own spirit more fully. Thus some people associate 
Catholic conceptions of extreme sanctity with a neg- 
lect of personal cleanliness ; and imagine that a clean 
Catholic can, according to his own creed, never come 
very near perfection. But the Church has never 
given this view her sanction ; she has never made 
it of faith that dirt is sacred ; she has added no ninth 
beatitude in favour of an unchanged shirt. Many of 
the greatest saints were doubtless dirty ; but they 
were dirty not because of the Church they belonged 
to, but because of the age they lived in. Such an 



THE HUMAN RACE AND REVELATION. 295 

expression of sanctity for themselves, it is probable, 
will be loathed by the saints of the futnre ; yet they 
may none the less reverence, for all that, the saints 
who so expressed it in the past. This is but a single 
instance ; but it may serve as a type of the wide cir- 
cle of changes that the Church as a living organism, 
still full of vigour and power of self -adaptation, will 
be able to develop, as the world develops round her, 
and yet lose nothing of her supernatural sameness. 

To sum up, then ; if we would obtain a true view 
of the general character of Catholicism, we must be- 
gin by making a clean sweep of all the views that, 
as outsiders, we have been taught to entertain about 
her. We must, in the first place, learn to conceive 
of her as a living, spiritual body, as infallible and as 
authoritative now as she ever was, with her eyes 
undimmed and her strength not abated, continuing 
to grow still as she has continued to grow hitherto : 
and the growth of the new dogmas that she may 
from time to time enunciate, we must learn to see 
are, from her own stand-point, signs of life and not 
signs of corruption. And further, when we come to 
look into her more closely, we must separate care- 
fully the diverse elements we find in her — her disci- 
pline, her pious opinions, her theology, and her re- 
ligion. 

Let honest enquirers do this to the best of their 
power, and their views will undergo an unlooked-for 



296 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

change. Other difficulties of a more circumstantial 
kind, it is true, still remain for them ; and of these 
I shall speak presently. But putting these for the 
moment aside, and regarding the question under its 
widest aspects only — regarding it only in connection 
with the larger generalisations of science, and the 
primary postulates of man' s spiritual existence — the 
theist will find in Catholicism no new difficulties. 
He will find in it the logical development of our 
natural moral sense, developed, indeed, and still 
developing, under a special and supernatural care — 
but essentially the same thing ; with the same nega- 
tions, the same assertions, the same positive truths, 
and the same impenetrable mysteries ; and with 
nothing new added to them, but help, and certainty, 
and guidance. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

TJNIVEESAL HISTOEY AND THE CLAIMS OF THE 
CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Oh tlie little more, and hoic much it is, 

And the little less, and ichat icorlds away ! — Robert Browning. 

And now we come to the last objections left us, of 
those which modern thought has arrayed against 
the Christian Revelation ; and these to many minds 
are the most conclusive and overwhelming of all— r 
the objections raised against it by a critical study of 
history. Hitherto we have been considering the 
Church only with reference to our general sense of 
the fitness and the rational probability of things. 
We have now to consider her with reference to spe- 
cial facts. Her claims and her character, as she 
exists at present, may make perhaps appeal over- 
poweringly to us ; but she cannot be judged only by 
these. For these are closely bound up with a long 
earthly history, which the Church herself has writ- 
ten in one way, binding herself to stand or fall by 
the truth of it ; and this all the secular wisdom of 
the world seems to be re-writing in quite another. 
This subject is so vast and intricate that even to ap- 

297 



298 ^'5 LIFE WORTH LIVIWG? 

proach tlie details of it would require volumes, not a 
single chapter. But room in a chapter may be 
found for one thing, of prior importance to any 
mass of detail ; and that is a simple statement of 
the principles — unknown to, or forgotten by exter- 
nal critics — by which all this mass of detail is to be 
interpreted. 

Let us remember first, then, to take a general 
view of the matter, that history as cited in witness 
against the Christian Revelation, divides itself into 
two main branches. The one is a critical examina- 
tion of Christianity, taken by itself — the authorship, 
and the authenticity of its sacred books, and the 
origin and growth of its doctrines. The other is a 
critical examination of Christianity as compared 
with other religions. And the result of both these 
lines of study is, to those brought up in the old 
faith, to the last degree startling, and in appearance 
at least altogether disastrous. Let us sum up briefly 
the general results of them ; and first of these the 
historical. 

We shall begin naturally with the Bible, as giving 
us the earliest historical point at which Christianity 
is assailable. What then has modern criticism ac- 
complished on the Bible? The Biblical account of 
the creation it has shown to be, in its literal sense, 
an impossible fable. To passages thought mystical 
and prophetic it has assigned the homeliest, and 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 299 

often retrospective meanings. Everywhere at its 
touch what seemed supernatural has been human- 
ized, and the divinity that hedged the records has 
rapidly abandoned them. And now looked at in 
the common daylight their whole aspect changes for 
us ; and stories that we once accepted with a solemn 
reverence seem childish, ridiculous, grotesque, and 
not unfrequently barbarous. Or if we are hardly 
prepared to admit so much as this, this much at 
least has been established firmly — that the Bible, if 
it does not give the lie itself to the astonishing 
claims that have been made for it, contains nothing 
in itself, at any rate, that can of itself be sufficient 
to support them. This applies to the N^ew Testa- 
ment just as much as to the Old ; and the conse- 
quences here are even more momentous. Weighed 
as mere human testimony, the value of the Gospels 
becomes doubtful or insignificant. For the miracles 
of Christ, and for his superhuman nature, they con- 
tain little evidence, that even tends to be satisfac- 
tory ; and even his daily words and actions it seems 
probable may have been inaccurately reported, in 
some cases perhaps invented, and in others supplied 
by a deceiving memory. When we pass from the 
Gospels to the Epistles, a kindred sight presents it- 
self. We discern in them the writings of men not 
inspired from above ; but, with many disagreements 
amongst themselves, struggling upwards from be- 



300 J^'S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

low, influenced by a variety of existing views, and 
doubtful whicli of them to assimilate. We discern 
in them, as we do in other writers, the products of 
their age and of their circumstances. The materials 
out of which they formed their doctrines we can 
find in the lay world around them. And as we fol- 
low the Church's history farther, and examine the 
appearance and the growth of her great subsequent 
dogmas, w^e can trace all of them to a natural and a 
non-Christian origin. We can see, for instance, how 
in part, at least, men conceived the idea of the 
Trinity from the teachings of Greek Mysticism ; and 
how the theory of the Atonement was shaped by 
the ideas of Roman Jurisprudence, Everywhere, 
in fact, in the holy building supposed to have come 
down from God, we detect fragments of older struc- 
tures, confessedly of earthly workmanship. 

But the matter does not end here. Historical 
science not only shows us Christianity, with its 
sacred history, in this new light ; but it sets other 
religions by the side of it, and shows us that their 
course through the world has been strangely similar. 
They too have had their sacred books, and their 
incarnate Gods for prophets ; they have had their 
priesthoods, their traditions, and their growing- 
bodies of doctrine : there is nothing in Christianity 
that cannot find its counterpart, even to the most 
marked details, in the life of its founder. Two 



EISTOBY AND CLAIMS OF CHBISTIAN CHURCH. 301 

centuries, for instance, before the birth of Christ, 
Buddha is said to have been born without human 
father. Angels sang in heaven to announce his ad- 
vent ; an aged hermit blessed him in his mother's 
arms ; a monarch was advised, though he refused, 
to destroy the child, who, it was predicted, should 
be a universal ruler. It is told how he was once lost, 
and was found again in a temple ; and how his young 
wisdom astonished all the doctors. A woman in a 
crowd was rebuked by him for exclaiming, ' Blessed 
is the woiiib tliat hare thee.^ His prophetic career 
began when he was about thirty years old ; and one 
of the most solemn events of it is his temptation 
in solitude by the evil one. Everywhere, indeed, in 
other religions we are discovering things that we once 
thought peculiar to the Christian. And thus the 
fatal inference is being drawn on all sides, that they 
have all sprung from a common and an earthly root, 
and that one has no more certainty than another. 
And thus another blow is dealt to a faith that was 
already weakened. Not only, it is thought, can 
Christianity not prove itself in any supernatural 
sense to be sacred, but other religions prove that 
even in a natural sense it is not singular. It has not 
come down from heaven : it is not exceptional even 
in its attempt to rise to it. 

Such are the broad conclusions which in these days 
seem to be forced upon us ; and which knowledge, 



302 J^'S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

as it daily widens, would seem to be daily strength- 
ening. But are these altogether so destructive as they 
seem ? Let us enquire into this more closely. If we 
do this, it will be soon apparent that the so-called 
enlightened and critical modern Judgment has been 
misled as to this point by an error I have already 
dwelt upon. It has considered Christianity solely 
as represented by Protestantism ; or if it has glanced 
at Rome at all, it has ignorantly dismissed as weak- 
nesses the doctrines which are the essence of her 
strength. Now, as far as Protestantism is concerned, 
the modern critical judgment is undoubtedly in the 
right. Not only, as I have pointed out already, has 
experience proved the practical incoherency of its 
superstructure, but criticism has washed away like 
sand every vestige of its supernatural foundation. 
If Christianity relies solely, in proof of its revealed 
message to us, on the external evidences as to its 
history and the source of its doctrines, it can never 
again hope to convince men. The supports of ex- 
ternal evidence are quite inadequate to the weight 
that is put upon them. They might possibly serve 
as props ; but they crush and crumble instantly, 
when they are used as pillars. And as pillars it is 
that Protestantism is compelled to use them. It will 
be quite sufficient, here, to confine our attention to 
the Bible, and the place which it occupies in the 
structure of the Protestant fabric. ' TTiere — in that 



HISTOBT AlTD CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 303 

hooTc,'' says Protestantism, ' is tlie Word of God ; 
there is my unerrin.g guide ; I listen to none hut 
that. All special Churches have varied., and have 
therefore erred ; hut it is my first axiom that that 
hoolc has never erred. On that hook, and on that 
hoolc only, do I rest myself ; and out of its mouth 
shall you judge me.'' And for a long time this lan- 
guage had much force in it ; for the Protestant axiom 
was received by all parties. It is true, indeed, as we 
have seen already, that in the absence of an authorita- 
tive interpreter, an ambiguous testament would itself 
have little authority. But it took a long time for 
men to perceive this ; and all admitted meanwhile 
that the testament was there, and it at any rate 
meant something. But now all this is changed. The 
great Protestant axiom is received by the world no 
longer. To many it seems not an axiom, but an ab- 
surdity ; at best it aj)pears but as a very doubtful 
fact : and if external proof is to be the thing that 
guides us, we shall need more proof to convince us 
that the Bible is the Word of God, than that Protes- 
tantism is the religion of the Bible. 

We need not pursue the enquiry further, nor ask 
how Protestantism will fare at the hands of Com- 
parative Mythology. The blow dealt by Biblical 
criticism is to all appearances mortal, and there is 
no need to look about for a second. But let us turn 
to Catholicism, and we shall see that the whole case 



304 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING ? 

is different. To its past history, to external evi- 
dence, and to tlie religions outside itself, Protestant 
Christianity bears one relation, and Roman Chris- 
tianity quite another. 

Protestantism offers itself to the world as a strange 
servant might, bringing with it a number of written 
testimonials. It asks us to examine them, and by 
them to judge of its merits. It expressly begs us 
not to trust to its own word. '/ cannot,'^ it says, 
'■rely upon my memory. It lias failed me often; it 
may fail me again. But look at these testimonials 
in my 'favour, and judge me only hy them.'' And 
the world looks at them, examines them carefully ; it 
at last sees that they look suspicious, and that they 
may, very possibly, be forgeries. It ask the Protest- 
ant Church to prove them genuine ; and the Protest- 
ant Church cannot. 

But the Catholic Church comes to us in an exactly 
opposite way. She too brings with her the very 
same testimonials ; but she knows the uncertainty 
that obscures all remote evidences, and so at first she 
does not lay much stress upon them. First she asks 
us to make some acquaintance with herself ; to look 
into her living eyes, to hear the words of her mouth, 
to watch her ways and works, and to feel her inner 
spirit ; and then she says to us, ' Can you trust me f 
If you can, you, must trust me all in all ; for the 
xery first thing I declare to you is, I have never lied. 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 305 

Can you trust me tliusfar f T7ien listen, and I will 
tell you my Mstory. Tou have heard it told one way, 
I Jcnow ; and that way often goes against me. My 
career, I admit it myself, has many suspicious cir- 
cumstances. But none of them positively condemn 
me : all are capable of a guiltless interpretation. 
And when you knoio me, as I win, you will give me 
the benefit of every douM.^ It is thus that the Catho- 
lic Church presents the Bible to us. ' Believe the 
Bible, for my salce,^ she saySj ^not me for the 
Bible's.^ And the book, as thus offered us, changes 
its whole character. We have not the formal testi- 
monials of a stranger ; we have instead the memo- 
randa of a friend. We have now that presumption 
in their favour that in the former case was wanting 
altogether ; and all that we ask of the records now 
is, not that they contain any inherent evidence of 
their truth, but that they contain no inherent evi- 
dence of their falsehood. 

Farther, there is this point to remember. Cath- 
olic and Protestant alike declare the Bible to be in- 
spired. But the Catholics can attach to inspiration 
a far wider, and less assailable meaning : for their 
Church claims for herself a perpetual living power, 
which can always concentrate the inspired element, 
be it never so diffused ; whereas for the Protestants, 
unless that element be closely bound up with the 
letter, it at once becomes intangible and eludes them 
20 



306 IS LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

altogether. And thus, whilst the latter have com- 
mitted themselves to definite statements, now proved 
untenable, as to what inspiration is, the Catholic 
Church, strangely enough, has never done anything 
of the kind. She has declared nothing on the sub- 
ject that is to be held of faith. The whole question 
is still, within limits, an open one. As the Catholic 
Church, then, stands at present, it seems hard to say 
that, were we for other reasons inclined to trust her, 
she makes any claims, on behalf of her sacred books, 
which, in the face of impartial history, would pre- 
vent our doing so. 

Let us now go farther, and consider those great 
Christian doctrines which, though it is claimed that 
they are all implied in the Bible, are confessedly 
not expressed in it, and were confessedly not con- 
sciously assented to by the Church, till long after 
the Christian Canon was closed. And here let us 
grant the modern critics their most hostile and ex- 
treme position. Let us grant that all the jdoctrines 
in question can be traced to external, and often to 
non-Christian sources. And what is the result on 
Romanism ? Does this logically go any way what- 
ever towards discrediting its claims ? Let us con- 
sider the matter fairly, and we shall see that it has 
not even a tendency to do so. Here, as in the case 
of the Bible, the Church' s doctrine of her infallibil- 
ity meets all objections. For the real question here 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 307 

is, not in what storehouse of opinions the Church 
found her doctrines, but why she selected those she 
did, and why she rejected and condemned the rest. 
History and scientific criticism cannot answer this. 
History can show us only who baked the separate 
bricks ; it cannot show us who made or designed the 
building. No one believes that the devil made the 
plans of Cologne Cathedral ; but were we inclined to 
think he , did, the story would be disproved in no 
way by our discovering from what quarries every 
stone had been taken. And the doctrines of the 
Church are but as the stones in a building, the let- 
ters of an alphabet, or the words of a language. 
Many are offered and few chosen. The supernat- 
ural action is to be detected in the choice. The 
whole history of the Church, in fact, as she herself 
tells it, may be described as a history of supernat- 
ural selection. It is quite possible that she may 
claim it to be more than that ; but could she vindi- 
cate for herself but this one faculty of an infallible 
choice, she would vindicate to the full her claim to 
be under a superhuman guidance. 

The Church may be conceived of as a living organ- 
ism, for ever and on all sides putting forth feelers 
and tentacles, that seize, try, and seem to dally with 
all kinds of nutriment. A part of this she at length 
takes into herself. A large part she at length puts 
down again. Much that is thus rejected she seems 



308 J^S LIFE WOBTH LIVING? 

for a long time on the point of choosing. But how- 
ever slow may be the final decision in coming, how- 
ever reluctant or hesitating it may seem to be, when 
it is once made, it is claimed for it that it is infallible. 
And this claim is one, as we shall see when we under- 
stand its nature, that no study of ecclesiastical history, 
no study of comparative mythology can invalidate 
now, or even promise to invalidate. There is nothing 
rash in saying this. The Church knows the difficul- 
ties that her past records present to us, especially 
that of the divine character of the Bible. But she 
knows too that this divinity is at present protected 
by its vagueness ; nor is she likely to expose it more 
openly to its enemies, till some sure plan of defence 
has been devised for it. Rigid as were the opinions 
entertained as to Biblical inspiration, throughout the 
greater part of the Church' s history, the Church has 
never formally assumed them as articles of faith. 
Had she done so, she might indeed have been con- 
victed of error, for many of these opinions can be 
shown to be at variance with fact. But though she 
lived and breathed for so many centuries amongst 
them, though for ages none of her members perhaps 
ever doubted their truth, she has not laid them on 
succeeding ages : she has left them opinions still. 
A Catholic might well adduce this as an instance, 
not indeed of her supernatural selection, but of its 
counterpart, her supernatural rejection. 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 309 

And Eow, to turn from the past to the future, her 
possible future conduct in this matter will give us a 
very vivid illustration of her whole past procedure. 
It may be that before the Church defines inspiration 
exactly (if she ever does so), she will wait till lay 
criticism has done all it can do. She may then con- 
sider what views of the Bible are historically tenable, 
and what not ; and may faithfully shape her teach- 
ing by the learning of this world, though it may 
have been gathered together for the express purpose 
of overthrowing her. Atheistic scholars may be 
quoted in her councils ; and supercilious and scepti- 
cal philologists, could they live another hundred 
years, might perhaps recognise their discoveries, 
even their words and jjhi^ases, embodied in an ecclesi- 
astical definition. To the outer world such a defini- 
tion would seem to be a mere natural production. 
But in the eyes of a Catholic it would be as truly 
supernatural, as truly the work of the Holy Spirit, 
as if it had come down ready-made out of heaven, 
with all the accompaniments of a rushing mighty 
wind, and of visible tongues of flame. Sanguine 
critics might expose the inmost history of the council 
in which the definition was made ; they might show 
the whole conduct of it, from one side, to be but a 
meshwork of accident and of human motives ; and 
they would ask triumphantly for any traces of the 
action of the divine spirit. But the Church would 



310 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

be unabashed. She would answer in the words of 
Job, ' Behold I go foricard, hut He is not tJiere ; 
and backward, hut I cannot perceive Him ; hut He 
IcnowetJi tJie way that I take ; when He hath tried 
me, I shall come forth as gold. Behold, my witness 
is in heatien, and my champion is on high.'' 

And thus the doctrine of the Church' s infallibility 
has a side that is just the opposite of that which is 
commonly thought to be its only one. It is sup- 
posed to have simply gendered bondage ; not to 
have gendered liberty. But as a matter of fact it 
has done both ; and if we view the matter fairly, we 
shall see that it has done the latter at least as com- 
pletely as the former. The doctrine of infallibility 
is undoubtedly a rope that tethers those that hold it 
to certain real or supposed facts of the past ; but it 
is a rope that is capable of indefinite lengthening. It 
is not a fetter only ; it is a support also ; and those 
who cling to it can venture fearlessly, as explorers, 
into currents of speculation that would sweep away 
altogether men who did but trust to their own pow- 
ers of swimming. !N'or does, as is often supposed, 
the centralizing of this infallibility in the person of 
one man present any difiiculty from the Catholie 
point of view. It is said that the Pope might any 
day make a dogma of any absurdities that might 
happen to occur to him ; and that the Catholic would 
be bound to accept these, however strongly his rea- 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CEBISTIAN CEUBCII. 31X 

son might repudiate them. And it is quite true that 
the Pope miglii do this any day, in the sense that 
there is no external power to prevent him. But he 
who has assented to the central doctrine of Catholi- 
cism knows that he never loill. And it is precisely 
the obvious absence of any restraint from without 
that brings home to the Catholic his faith in the 
guiding power from within. 

Such, then, and so compacted is the Church of 
Rome, as a visible and earthly body, with a past 
and future history. And with so singular a firm- 
ness and flexibility is her frame knit together, that 
none of her modern enemies can get any lasting hold 
on her, or dismember her or dislocate her limbs on 
the racks of their criticism. 

But granting all this, what does this do for her ? 
Does it do more than present her to us as the 
toughest and most fortunate religion, out of many 
co-ordinate and competing ones % Does it tend in 
any way to set her on a different platform from the 
others \ And the answer to this is, that, so far as 
exact proof goes, we have nothing to expect or deal 
with in the matter, either one way or the other. 
The evidences at our disposal will impart a general 
tendency to our opinions, but no more than that. 
The general tendency here, however, is the very re- 
verse of what it is vulgarly supposed to be. So far 
from the similarities to her in other religions telling 



312 J'S LIFE WORTH LIYINQ ? 

against tlie special claims of the Catholic Church, 
they must really, with the candid theist, tell very 
strongly in her favour. For the theist, all theisms 
have a profound element of truth in them ; and all 
alleged revelations will, in his eyes, be natural the- 
isms, struggling to embody themselves in some au- 
thorised and authoritative form. The Catholic 
Church, as we have seen, is a human organism, ca- 
pable of receiving the Divine Spirit ; and this is 
what all other religious bodies, in so far as they 
have claimed authority for their teaching, have con- 
sciously or unconsciously attempted to be likewise ; 
only the Catholic Church represents success, where 
the others represent failure : and thus these, from 
the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incom- 
plete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith 
is world-wide and as old as time ; only in one par- 
ticular spot an angel has come down and troubled 
it ; and the waters have been circling there, thence- 
forth, in a healing vortex. Such is the sort of claim 
that the Catholic Church makes for herself ; and, if 
this be so, what she is, does not belie what she 
claims to be. Indeed, the more we compare her with 
the other religions, her rivals, the more, even where 
she most resembles them, shall we see in her a some- 
thing that marks her off from them. The others are 
like vague and vain attempts at a forgotten tune ; 
she is like the tune itself, which is recognised the 



HISTORY AND CLAIMS OF CnRISTIAN CHUBGH. 313 

instant it is heard, and which has been so near to us 
all the time, though so immeasurably far away from 
us. The Catholic Church is the only dogmatic relig- 
ion that has seen what dogmatism really implies, 
and what will, in the long run, be demanded of it, 
and she contains in herself all appliances for meet- 
ing these demands. She alone has seen that if there 
is to be an infallible voice in the world, this voice 
must be a living one, as capable of speaking now as 
it ever w^as in the past ; and that as the world' s ca- 
pacities for knowledge grow, the teacher must be 
always able to unfold to it a fuller teaching. The 
Catholic Church is the only historical religion that 
can conceivably thus adapt itself to the wants of the 
present day, without virtually ceasing to be itself. 
It is the only religion that can keep its identity 
without losing its life, and keep its life without 
losing its identity ; that can enlarge its teachings 
without changing them ; that can be always the 
same, and yet be always developing. 

All this, of course, does not prove that Catholicism 
is the truth ; but it will show the theist that, for 
all that the modern world can tell him, it may be. 
And thus much at least will by-and-by come to be 
recognised generally. Opinion, that has been clari- 
fied on so many subjects, cannot remain forever tur- 
bid here, A change must come, and a change can 
only be for the better. At present the so-called 



314 -^"'S' LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

leaders of enlightened and liberal tliought are in 
this matter, so far as fairness and insight go, on a 
level with the wives and mothers of our small pro- 
vincial shopkeepers, or the beadle or churchwarden 
of a country parish. But prejudice, even when so 
virulent and so dogged as this, will lift and dis- 
appear some day like a London fog ; and then the 
lineaments of the question will confront us clearly 
— ^the question : but who shall decide the answer ? 
What I have left to say bears solely upon this. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

BELIEF AT^D WILL. 

' Abraliam helieiied Ood, and it was counted to him for righteousness. ' 

Arguments are like the seed, or like the sonl, as 
Paul conceived of it, which he compared to seed. 
They are not quickened unless they die. As long 
as they remain for us in the form of arguments they 
do no work. Their work begins only, after a time 
and in secret, when they have sunk down into the 
memory, and have been left to lie there ; when the 
hostility and distrust they were regarded with dies 
away ; when, unperceived, they melt into the mental 
system, and, becoming part of oneself, effect a turn- 
ing round of the soul. This is true, at least, when 
the matters dealt with are such as have engaged us 
here. It may be true, too, of those who discern and 
urge the arguments, just as well as of those upon 
whom they urge them. But the immediate barren- 
ness of much patient and careful reasoning should 
not make us think that it is lost labour. One way 
or other it will some day bear its fruit. Sometimes 
the intellect is the servant of the heart. At other 
times the heart must follow slowly upon the heels of 
the intellect. 

And such is the case now. For centuries man's 

315 



316 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

faith and all his loftier feelings had their way made 
plain before them. The whole empire of human 
thought belonged to them. But this old state of 
things endures no longer. Upon this Empire, as up- 
on that of Rome, calamity has at last fallen. A horde 
of intellectual barbarians has burst in upon it, and 
has occupied by force the length and breadth of it. 
The result has been^ astounding. Had the invaders 
been barbarians only, they might have been repelled 
easily ; but they were barbarians armed with the 
most powerful weapons of civilisation. They were a 
phenomenon new to history : they showed us real 
knowledge in the hands of real ignorance ; and the 
work of the combination thus far has been ruin, not 
reorganisation. Few great movements at the begin- 
ning have been conscious of their own true tendency ; 
but no great movement has mistaken it like modern 
Positivism. Seeing just too well to have the true 
instinct of blindness, and too ill to have the proper 
guidance from sight, it has tightened its clutch upon 
the world of thought, only to impart to it its own 
confusion. What lies before men now is to reduce 
this confusion to order, by a patient and calm em- 
ployment of the intellect. Intellect itself will never 
re-kindle faith, or restore any of those powers that 
are at present so failing and so feeble ; but it will 
work like a pioneer to prepare their way before them, 
if they are ever revived otherwise, encouraged in its 



BELIEF AND WILL. 317 

labours, perhaps not even by hope, but at any rate 
by the hope of hope. 

As a pioneer, and not as a preacher, I have tried 
to indicate the real position in which modern knowl- 
edge has placed us, and the way in which it puts 
the problem of life before us. I have tried to show 
that, whatever ultimately its tendency may prove to 
be, it cannot be the tendency that, by the school 
that has given it to us, it is supposed to have been ; 
and that it either does a great deal more than that 
school thinks it does, or a great deal less. History 
would teach us this, even if nothing else did. The 
school in question has proceeded from denial to 
denial, thinking at each successive moment that it 
had reached its iinal halting-place, and had struck 
at last on a solid and firm foundation. First, it de- 
nied the Church to assert the Bible ; then it denied 
the Bible to assert God ; then it denied God to as- 
sert the moral dignity of man : and there, if it 
could remain, it would. But what it would do is 
of no avail. It is not its own master ; it is com- 
pelled to move onwards ; and now, under the force 
of its own relentless logic, this last resting-place is 
beginning to fail also. It professed to compensate 
for its denials of God's existence by a freer and 
more convincing re-assertion of man' s dignity. But 
the principles which obliged it to deny the first be- 
lief are found to be even more fatal to the substi- 



318 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING f 

tute. ' Unless I have seen with my eyes I will not 
helieve,'^ expresses a certain mental tendency that 
has always had existence. But till Science and its 
positive methods began to dawn on the world, this 
tendency was vague and wavering. Positive Science 
supplied it with solid nutriment. Its body grew 
denser ; its shape more and more definite ; and now 
the completed portent is spreading its denials 
through the whole universe. So far as spirit goes 
and spiritual aspirations, it has left existence empty, 
swept and garnished. If spirit is to enter in again 
and dwell there, we must seek by other methods for 
it. Modern thought has not created a new doubt ; 
it has simply made perfect an old one ; and has ad- 
vanced it from the distant regions of theory into the 
very middle of our hearts and lives. It has made 
the question of belief or of unbelief the supreme 
practical question for us. It has forced us to stake 
everything on the cast of a single die. What are 
we ? Have we been hitherto deceived in ourselves, 
or have we not ? And is every hope that has hith- 
erto nerved our lives, melting at last away from us, 
utterly and for ever ? Or are we indeed what we 
have been taught to think we are ? Have we indeed 
some aims that we may still call high and holy^ 
still some aims that are more than transitory ? And 
have we still some right to that reverence that we 
have learnt to cherish for ourselves ? 



BELIEF AND WILL. 319 

Here lie the difficulties. The battle is to be fought 
here — here at the very threshold — at the entrance to 
the spiritual world. Are we moral and spiritual 
beings, or are we not % That is the decisive question, 
which we must say our Yes or No to. If, with our 
eyes open, and with all our hearts, it be given us to 
say Yes — to say Yes without fear, and firmly, and in 
the face of everything — then there will be little more 
to fear. We shall have fought the good fight, we 
shall have kept the faith ; and whatever we lack 
more, will without doubt be added to us. From this 
belief in ourselves we shall pass to the belief in Grod, 
as its only rational basis and its only emotional com- 
pletion ; and, perhaps, from a belief in God, to a rec- 
ognition of His audible voice amongst us. But at 
any rate, whatever after-difficulties beset us, they 
will not be new difficulties ; only those we had braved 
at first, showing themselves more clearly. 

But that first decision — how shall we make it? 
Who or what shall help us, or give us counsel? 
There is no evidence that can do so in the sensible 
world around us. The universe, as positive thought 
approaches it, is blind and dumb about it. Science 
and history are sullen, and blind, and dumb. They 
await u]3on our decision before they will utter a 
single word to us : and that decision, if we have a 
will at all, it lies with our own will — with our will 
alone, to make. It may, indeed, be said that the 



320 ^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

will has to create itself by an initial exercise of itself, 
in an assent to its own existence. If it can do this, 
one set of obstacles is surmounted ; but others yet 
confront us. The world into which the moral will 
has borne itself — not a material world, but a spiritual 
— a world which the will's existence alone makes 
possible, this world is not silent, like the other, but 
it is torn and divided against itself, and is resonant 
with unending contradictions. Its first aspect is that 
of a place of torture, a hell of the intellect, in which 
reason is to be racked for ever by a tribe of sphinx- 
like monsters, themselves despairing. Good and evil 
inhabit there, confronting each other, for ever unre- 
conciled : there is omnipotent power baffled, and 
omnipotent mercy unexercised. Is the will strong 
enough to hold on through this baffling and mon- 
strous world, and not to shrink back and bid the 
vision vanish ? Can we still resolve to say, ' I believe, 
although it is impossible ' ? Is the will to assert our 
own moral nature — our own birthright in eternity, 
strong enough to bear us on ? 

The trial is a hard one, and whilst we doubt and 
hesitate under it the universal silence of the vast 
physical world itself disheartens us. Who are we, 
in the midst of this unheeding universe, that we can 
claim for ourselves so supreme a heritage ; that we 
can assert for ourselves other laws than those which 
seem to be all-pervading, and that we can dream 



BELIEF AND WILL. 321 

of breaking through them into a something else 
beyond ? 

And yet it may be that faith will sncceed and con- 
quer sight — that the preciousness of the treasure we 
cling to will nerve us with enough strength to retain 
it. It may be that man, having seen the way that, 
unaided, he is forced to go, will change his attitude ; 
that, finding only weakness in pride, he will seek 
for strength in humility, and will again learn to say, 
'Ihelieve^ altliougli I never can comprehend.'' Once 
let him say this, his path will again grow clearer 
for him. Through confusion, and doubt, and dark- 
ness, the brightness of God' s countenance will again 
be visible ; and by-and-by again he may hear the 
Word calling him. From his first assent to his own 
moral nature he 7nust rise to a theism, and he may 
rise to the recognition of a Church — to a visible em- 
bodiment of that moral nature of his, as directed and 
Joined to its one aim and end — to its delight, and its 
desire, and its completion. Then he will see all that 
is high and holy taking a distinct and helping form 
for him. Grace and mercy will come to him through 
set and certain channels. His nature will be re- 
deemed visibly from its weakness and from its little- 
ness — redeemed, not in dreams or in fancy, but in 
fact. God Himself will be his brother and his father ; 
he will be near akin to the Power that is always, and 

is everywhere. His love of virtue will be no longer 
21 



322 J^S LIFE WORTH LIVING? 

a mere taste of his own : it will be the discernment 
and taking to himself of the eternal strength and of 
the eternal treasure ; and, whatever he most reveres 
in mother, or wife, or sister — this he will know is 
holy, everywhere and for ever, and is exalted high 
over all things in one of like nature with theirs, the 
Mother of grace, the Parent of sweet clemency, who 
will protect him from the enemy, and save him in 
the hour of death. 

Such is the conception of himself, and of his place 
in existence, that, always implicit in man, man has 
at last developed. He has at last conceived his race 
— the faithful of it — as the bride of God. Is this 
majestic conception a true one, or is it a dream only, 
with no abiding substance ? Is it merely a misty 
vision rising up like an exhalation from the earth, or 
does a something more come down to it out of hea- 
ven, and strike into it substance and reality 1 This 
figure of human dreams has grown and grown in 
stature : does anything divine descend to it, and so 
much as touch its lips or its lifted hands ? If so, it 
is but the work of a moment. The contact is com- 
plete. Life, and truth, and force, like an electric 
current, pass into the whole frame. It lives, it moves, 
it breathes : it has a body and a being : the divine 
and the eternal is indeed dwelling amongst us. And 
thus, though mature knowledge may seem, as it stiU 
widens, to deepen the night around us ; though the 



BELIEF AND WILL. 323 

"aniverse yawn wider on all sides of us, in vaster 
depths, in more unfathomable, soulless gulfs ; though 
the roar of the loom of time grow more audible and 
more deafening in our ears — yet through the night 
and through the darkness the divine light of our 
lives will only burn the clearer : and this speck of a 
world as it moves through the blank immensity will 
bear the light of all the worlds upon its bosom. 

Thinkers like Mr. Leslie Stephen say that such 
beliefs as these belong to dream-land ; and they are 
welcome if they please to keep their names. Their 
terminology at least has this merit, that it recognises 
the dualism of the two orders of things it deals with. 
Let them keep their names if they will ; and in their 
language the case amounts to this — that it is only 
for the sake of the dreams that visit it that the world 
of reality has any certain value for us. Will not the 
dreams continue, when the reality has passed away ? 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a scries of volumes, to be 
issued ucder the title of 

CURRENT DISCUSSION, 

A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS 
OF THE TIME. 

The seiies will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed to 
bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in the 
library, those important and representative papers from recent English periodi- 
cals, which may fairly be said to form the best history of the thought and in- 
vestigation of the last few years. It is characteristic of recent thought and 
science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important 
work has appeared in the form of contributions to reviews and magazines ; the 
thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is 
easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, 
rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only. 
As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent in- 
terest, almost all of whose literature exists only iv 'he shape of detached papeis, 
individually so famous that their topics and opinions. are in everybody's mouth 
— yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who 
have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study lung 

files of periodicals. 

» 

In so collecting chese separate papers as to give the reader a fair if not 
complete view of the discussions in which they form a part ; to make tliem 
convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussior •> ; and especi- 
ally to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the histoiy of 
modern thought, — it is believed that this series will do a ser\'ice that will be 
^videly appreciated. 

Such papers naturally include three classes : — ^hose which by their originality 
have recently led discussion into altogether new channels ; those which have 
attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the 
other in great current questions ; and finally, purely critical and analytical dis- 
sertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of 
these classes of expression. 



It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such gen- 
eral divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes ■will be 
devoted : — 

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, NATURAL SCIENCE. 

RECENT ARCH^OLOGICAL DISCOVERY. 

QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, 

ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, 

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, LITERARY TOPICS. 

Among the material selected for the first volume (International Politics), 
which will be issued immediately, are the following papers : 

Archibald Forbes's Essay on " The Russians, Turks, and Bul- 
garians;" Vsct. Stratford de Redcliffe's "Turkey;" Mr. Glad- 
stone's "Montenegro;" Professor Goldwin Smith's Paper on "The 
Political Destiny of Canada," and his Essay called " The Slaveholder 
and the Turk;" Professor Blackie's "Prussia in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury ; " Edward Dicey's "Future of Egypt;" Louis Kossuth's 
"What is in Store for Europe;" and Professor Freeman's "Relation 
OF the English People to the War." 

Among the contents of the second volume (Questions of Belief), are : 

The two well-known "Modern Symposia;" the Discussion by Professor 
Huxley, Mr. Hutton, Sir J. F. Stephen, Lord Selborne, James Martin- 
eau, Frederic Harrison, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Duke of Argyll, 
and others, on "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in a Re- 
ligious Belief; " and the Discussion byHuxLEY, Hutton, Lord Blatchford, 
the Hon. RoDEN Noel, Lord Selborne, Canon Barry, Greg, the Rev. 
Baldwin Brown, Frederic Harrison, and others, on "The Soul and 
Future Life. Also, Professor Calderwood's "Ethical Aspects of the 
Development Theory ; " Mr. G. H. Lewes's Paper on "The Course of 
Modern Thought;" Thomas Hughes on "The Condition and Pros- 
spects of the Church of England;" W. H. Mallock's "Is Lim 
Worth Living ? " Frederic Harrison's " The Soul and Future Life ; ' 
and the Rev. R. F. Littledale's " The Pantheistic Factor in Christian 
Thought." 

The volumes will be printed in a handsome crown octavo form, and will 
sell for about $i 50 each. 

G. P. PUTNx\M'S SONS, 182 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS. 

VAN LAUN. The History of French Literature. 

By Henri Van Laun, Translator of Taine's "History of English 
Literature," " the Works of Moliere," etc. 
Vol I. From its Origin to the Renaissance. 8vo, cloth 

extra $2 50 

Vol. II. From the Renaissance to the Close of the Reign 

OF Louis XIV. 8vo, cloth extra $2 50 

Vol. III. From the Reign of Louis XIV. to that of 
Napoleon III. 8vo, cloth extra . . . . . . $2 50 

The set, three volumes, in box, half calf, $15.00 ; cloth extra, 7 50 
" We have to deal with a people essentially spirited and intellectual, whose spirit and 
intellect have been invariably the wonder and admiration, if not the model and mold 
of contemporary thought, and whose literary triumphs remain to this day among the 
most notable landmarks of modern literature." * * * — Extract /rom Author s 
Preface. 

" Mr, Van Laun has not given us a mere critical study of the works he considers, but 
has done his best to bring their authors, their way of life, and the ways of those around 
them, before us in a living likeness." — London Daily News. 

"This history is extremely interesting in its exposition of the literary progress of the 
age, in connection with the social and political influences which helped to mould the 
character and the destinies of the peox>\e." — Bostojt Daily Globe. 

" It is full of keenest interest for every person who knows or wishes to learn anything 
of French literature, or of French literary history or biography. Scarcely any book 
of recent origin, indeed, is better titled than this to win general favor with all classes of 
persons." — N. V. Evening- Post. 

THIERS (Louis Adolphe) Life of. By Francois Le Goff, 

Docteur-es-lettres, Author of a " History of the Government of 

National Defense in the Provinces," etc. Translated, from the 

author's unpublished manuscript, by Theodore Stanton, A.M. 

Octavo, with Portrait, cloth extra. (In Press.) 

This book is written especially for the American public by M. Francois Le GofiF, of 
Paris, a French publicist of the Conservative-Republican school, who knew Thiers 
personally and who is thoroughly conversant with the history and politics of France. 
Besides the biographical narrative, which is enlivened by many fresh anecdotes, the 
writer attempts to present such a connected view of French political history for the 
last fifty years, as will throw light upon the present crisis in France, so incomprehen- 
sible to most Americans. The work will also be interesting as an able defense of the 
unity of Thiers' political life, a position rarely assumed by even the most ardent friends 
of the great statesman. It is illustrated by a fac-simile of his handwriting and auto- 
graph, a view of his home, etc. 

BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES. First Series. Contemporary States- 
men of Europe. Edited by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. 
They are handsomely printed in square i6mo, and attractively bound in 
cloth extra. Price per vol. . . . . . . . $I 50 

Vol. I. English Statesmen. By T. W. Higginson. 
" II. English Radical Leaders. By R. J. Hinton. 
" III. French Leaders. By Edward King. 
" IV. German Political Leaders. By Herbert Tuttle. 

These volumes are planned to meet the desire which exists for accurate and graphic 
information in regard to the leaders of political action in other countries. They will 
give portraitures of the men and analysis of their lives and work, that will be vivid and 
picturesque, as well as accurate and faithful, and that will combine the authority of 
careful historic narration with the interest attaching to anecdote and personal 
delineation. 

" Compact and readable * * * leaves little to be desired," — N. V. Nation. 



PUBLICATIONS OF G. P. PUTA^AM'S SONS. 

A History of American Literature. By Moses Coit Tyler, Pro- 
fessor of English Literature in the University of Michigan. Volumes 
I and II, comprising the period, 1607-1765. Large 8vo, about 700 
pages, handsomely bound in cloth, extra, gilt top, $5.00 ; half calf, 
extra, $9 50 

The History of American Literature, now offered to the public, is the first at- 
tempt ever made to give a systematic and critical account of the literary development 
of the American people. It is not a mere cyclopsedia 01 literature, or a series of de- 
tached biographical sketches accompanied by literary extracts : but an analytic and 
sustained narrative of our literary history from the earliest English settlement in 
America down to the present time. The work is the result of original and independent 
studies prosecuted by the author for the past ten years, and gives an altogether new 
analysis of American literary forces and results during nearly three centuries. The 

E resent two volumes— a complete work in themselves — cover the whole field of our 
istory during the colonial time. 

" An important national work." — New York Tribune. 

" The literary event of the decade." — Hartford Courant. 

" A book more interesting than half the new novels." — The Nation. 

" A work of great and permanent importance." — Neiu York E^iening Post. 

" One of the most valuable publications of the century." — Boston Post. 

" A book actually fascinating from beginning to end. — Prest. J. B. Angell. 

" As the work stands, it may rightfully claim a place on the library table of every 
cultivated American." — New York Times. 

" No work of similar scope and magnitude and erudition exists, or has been at- 
tempted in this country." — New York Evangelist. 

" A unique and valuable work " — Chicago Tribune. 

" A work which will rank with those of Sismondi, Ticknor, and Taine." — New 
3 'ork Evening Express. 

" It is this philosophical character of the work which brings it not far distant from 
the works of Taine, of Buckle, and of Lecky." — Buffalo Express. 

" One can hardly speak too strongly in praise of these conscientious, careful and 
successful volumes, which deserve to be studied alike by scholars and patriots." — Rev, 
iie}iry Martyn Dexter., D.D. 

" But the plan of Professor Tyler's book is so vast and its execution so fearless, 
that no reader can expect or wish to agree with all its personal judgments. It is a book 
truly admirable, both in design and in general execution ; the learning is great, the 
treatment wise, the style fresh and vigorous. Here and there occurs a phrase which a 
severer revision would perhaps exclude, but all such criticisms are trivial in view of so 
signal a success. Like Parkman, Professor Tyler may almost be said to have created, 
not merely his volumes, but their theme. Like Parkman, at any rate, he has taken a 
whole department of human history, rescued it from oblivion, and made it hencefor- 
ward a matter of deep interest to every thinking mind." — T. W. Higginson, in The 
Natio?i. 

" The work betrays acute philosophical insight, a rare power of historical re- 
search, and a cultivated literary habit, which was perhaps no less essential than the 
two former conditions, to its successful accomplishment. The style of the author is 
marked by vigor, originality, comprehensiveness, and a curious instmct in the selection 
of words. In this latter respect, though not in the moulding of sentences, the reader 
may perhaps be reminded of the choice and fragrant vocabulary of Washington Irving, 
whose words alone often leave an exquisite odor like the perfume of sweet-briar and 
arbutus." — George Ripley, in the Tribjifie. 

" Professor Moses Coil Tyler's ' History of American Literature,' of which the 
first two volumes have just been issued, will take rank at once as a book of lasting 
value, even though the author should advance no further than he has already done in 
the scheme ot his work. We are not unmindful of the eminent historians this country 
has produced, when we express our opinion that his history is the best study of Ameri- 
can historic material that has been written bj' an American. There has been manifestly 
no limit to the enthusiasm, conscientiousness and industry with which he has possessed 
himself ot the entire body of the literature of which he treats, and at the same time he 
has displayed the qualities of a true literary artist in giving form, color and perspective 
to his work." — Daniel Gray, in the Buffalo Courier. 



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